Scouting cemeteries for filming is always fun, because you quickly learn there are three types:
1) No filming, this is a place of mourning and how dare you ask
2) Yes to filming, but only if the scene respects the solemn sanctity of the space
3) Fuck yeah we love filming, do whatever brah!
I learned this scouting for a movie years ago, which had a scene where two college kids sneak off to a cemetery and hook up, culminating in a not-so-quiet blowjob.
I start making calls. The first several cemeteries are hard no’s to ANY filming.
The next two are very tentative maybes, but ONLY if the scene is either a funeral, or characters mourning over a grave. Yeah, nope.
The next cemetery, the woman who answers the phone is so elderly and frail-sounding, I don’t have the heart to make the pitch, so I pretend I’ve called the wrong number and hang up.
Getting desperate now. A fellow scout gives me a tip for a film-friendly graveyard and I call.
“Yeah, we do filming,” the guy who answers says in a gruff voice.
“OK, awesome!” I say. “But see, the scene isn’t a funeral, or mourning over a grave or anything…”
“Yeah….”
“Great. OK. So it’s these college kids, and they come into the cemetery at night…”
Silence.
“And, well, they park on the side of the road…”
Silence.
“They have a, ah, heartfelt, romantic conversation…”
Silence.
“…..And then they start making out…”
Silence.
“And then, ah… Well, then she just goes right ahead and, you know, gives him a blow – “
“Brother, brother, brother,” he interrupts suddenly, clearly annoyed.
A beat. Then, in that same gruff voice:
“Five thousand bucks location fee, they can do whatever the fuck they want, inside the car or out. When do you want to scout?”
When I die, please be sure to bury me in one of the “fuck yeah filming!” cemeteries.
Eternity is just too long a time to spend in the unending melancholy of mournful solitude.
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