So as I mentioned there was a second Spencer Tunick shoot in the city centre this morning. My excitement for it kind of waned throughout yesterday as the euphoria wore off and the sleep deprivation kicked in, but I have a pathological aversion to backing out of things so at 3am I made my way to Grand Canal Square.
Obviously, there were far far fewer people signed on for this one – somewhere between 75 and 100, at a guess – and we were all tired, so the atmosphere was much more muted than on Saturday morning. Once the crew arrived we were brought into a nearby hotel lobby (much more pleasant, in theory, than standing on a pier, but it felt like cheating) and briefed on what was going to happen. We were going to be lined up on balconies on a nearby (empty) apartment building, with the first shot consisting of couples only. That wasn’t great news for me, what with my girlfriend being at the arse end of another continent, but we were told that everyone would be brought out for the second shot. The third shot was to take place on the roof, but that one was just for the laydeez.
There’s one cardinal rule of any event like this: always push your way to the front. My diminished enthusiasm let me down here and I stupidly let myself get stuck at the back. After far too long of a wait we were split into groups of seven and each group was told to go to a certain apartment, with my group getting shunted into one at the back of the building. Our balcony was completely out of the camera’s line of sight, which didn’t bode well.
After yet more waiting in the apartment (which was very nice, incidentally, in an American Psycho, why-the-hell-is-there-a-photo-of-Steve-McQueen kind of way) a guy with a walkie asked three of us to move to the apartment across the hall. I jumped at the chance to actually do something and we went in to where two couples were already in the nip, having just finished the first shot. They seemed suitably embarrassed to see three fully clothed people walk in.
I was there for a grand total of three minutes when one of the other volunteers – a pregnant women – asked if I’d swap places with her husband (er, which is to say, her husband was still in the other apartment, and she was nervous and wanted to have him with her in the picture). Back I went.
Yet more sitting around… guy with walkie kept coming in and saying “five minutes, five minutes” while we wondered how the shoot was going to work given our position. This shortly gave way to wondering why the front balconies were filling up since we hadn’t even been given the go-ahead to strip. Ten minutes later and guy with walkie comes in looking sheepish: “Uh, it’s over.”
Six fucking am, I haven’t had so much as a shoe off, and we’re told it’s over. Second cardinal rule I broke: never be nice to a pregnant woman.
Ah, I can’t stay mad at her. She was very nice and hadn’t been at the South Wall shoot, so I’m glad she had the opportunity. Still, the concordance of piss-ups and breweries springs to mind.
At least I’ll always have the beach.
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