Karma: The Movie

I work in film and television. We were shooting in a pretty upper-class neighborhood, and the woman living beside the house we were filming in decided that she hadn’t been paid enough.

A few hours into our day, she started playing opera music as loud as she could with all of her windows open. After an hour or two of that, she ramped it up and started mowing her lawn. Then, she just sat right on her property line with the mower going full blast, until a producer went over and kindly asked her to stop.

I’m not high enough in the production to know how much she was asking for, but apparently, it was too much because he walked away shaking his head and told the sound guys there was nothing he could do.

Once night rolled around, my boss had had enough of this lady and decided to annoy her right back.

We got some 10k lights — which are pretty g**d*** bright — and pointed them directly into her windows. It was basically midday sunlight blasting into her house at 10:00 pm. They’re designed for cinematic-level cinematography, so we were able to direct them tightly enough (and the houses were big and far enough apart) that no other house on the street would even notice they were there… just her.

That’s when she called the police, saying that we were filming illegally. (It was a full union show with permits, and on-duty police were also there.) A cop pulled up and saw the other officers already around to block traffic for us. They went to the craft table, got a snack, and left.

We did turn off the lights around 1:00 am, though, because we’re not animals.