An unusual afternoon in OKC

Yesterday, I got to experience an especially cool, out-of-the-norm work day. Symptoms of it began when I pulled into the parking garage near my office building in Oklahoma City. First, I was greeted by a parking attendant checking to see if I was a monthly (parking-pass worthy) customer because the garage was full and she was turning away one-time parkers. As I pulled in, my first thought was, “Great! I’m gonna have a tough time trying to find a parking place today.” (Yet another perk to working downtown.) I tried to remember what events were going on, but I couldn’t think of anything that would explain the extra volume of parkers. Then another attendant directed me to a parking place right by the elevators on the sixth floor (in a strip where parking is usually not allowed.) “Bonus!”  Okay, my day was shaping up to be strange, but not in a bad way. As I walked out of the garage I noticed several notes having ‘BUB’ scrawled on them with black marker and posted  about every 30 feet like bread crumbs. I felt a little rush of adrenaline. What’s going on? The make-shift signs and  I parted ways once I got around the corner, but the journalist in me wanted to follow them. Oh, well. I had to get to work, so the adventure came to an end.

To make myself feel better, I decided that it was probably just something to do with a lame conference or boring company event for bigwigs.

Early in the afternoon, my friend Christy and I went across the street to get a soda. We remembered the signs and started speculating what the deal was. We wistfully gazed north where the green-papered BUBs pointed. We could see by the crowd that there was definitely something interesting up at Leadership Square. We couldn’t stand it anymore and we were so close (only half a block away). We went  to check it out. As we drew closer, we could make out  police cars blocking the street from traffic, several trucks filled with various equipment,  a black limo, large microphones, and a film crew. My actress friend realized it was most likely the same group connected to a casting party she had attended the week before. It was. The movie “Bringing Up Bobby” was being shot on location in the middle of downtown OKC.

This wasn’t an amateur film production, either. The actors we saw are very well-known and have been in too many top movies to bother listing. The director was none other than the willowy Famke Janssen, also known as Jean Grey/Phoenix of X-men fame, not to mention a Bond girl in “GoldenEye.” She was just as beautiful in person as she appears on the big screen. And acting out scenes were the ever popular action-film star Milla Jovovich (an all-time favorite - LeeLoo from “The Fifth Element,” Alice in the “Resident Evil” movies and star of “Ultraviolet”) and the endearing Bill Pullman, unsuspecting love interest of Sandra Bullock in “While You Were Sleeping,” the brave president/pilot in “Independence Day” and quirky dad in “Casper,” among others.

It’s not every day you get to watch Hollywood hard at work in the center of your reality.