Skip to main content

Meeting Jack Sparrow



One of the cool things about living in Hawaii is that they are always filming a movie or a television show here. There are various celebrities working or at the very least, vacationing, here. There's a section of the newspaper dedicated entirely to reporting who has been sighted where.

I'm not one of those people who gets star struck (usually). I don't go chasing down the movie stars to get my picture made with them. They are just regular people and probably would like to not be hounded all the time by complete strangers following them around and blinding them with flashbulbs.

Nevertheless, when we found out that Johnny Depp had been coming out to greet his fans every evening for a few minutes while filming "Pirates of the Caribbean 4" we thought it would be fun to go check it out. I thought we might get to see some of the action being filmed and it just seemed like something different to do.

We went early and, following the advice of friends who had already been, staked out a spot right up against the fence. We brought games and snacks, books and cards. We made certain we had enough stuff to keep the kids entertained so we wouldn't have to listen to bored whining. He's come out at different times each night, so we didn't know how long we would have to wait.

Fortunately, it was only about 9:30 P.M. when he made his appearance. The crowd had been very civil and calm. We had all sat around and chit chatted for several hours.

When Johnny Depp arrived it was like a shot of electricity ran through the crowd. Everyone was suddenly up on their feet and surging forward.


Because we had positioned ourselves up front early on, we were nearly pinned against the fence by the crowd behind us. Emily was standing right behind Katie and had to brace her arms on the fence to keep from being smushed up against her. Some of the women were shrieking and every person had a camera flashing as fast as it could go.



They had warned us ahead of time that there would be no time for autographs, or posing with him for photos. He would just come down the line to shake hands and we could snap photos as he did that. When he got to us, he squatted down in front of Katie, put his hands on her shoulders, and said in his Jack Sparrow accent, "How are you, love? No squishy-squishy?" She told him she was only being squished a little, and he said something else (for the life of me I can't remember what!) and then shook our hands and moved on.


We also got to see the director, Jerry Bruckheimer.

And we did get to see a little of the action taking place during filming. I don't want to spoil the plot of the movie for you, but I managed to capture this video while they were filming on the ship behind us.



I wonder if I can sell the rights to this to Entertainment Tonight?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...

Queen Emma's Summer Palace

We recently visited Queen Emma's Summer Palace in Honolulu. If you are expecting a "palace", you will be disappointed. It's a nice house but not particularly palatial . If you think of it as Queen Emma's Summer Cottage, you'll enjoy it more because it will meet your expectations. Queen Emma was the wife of King Kamehameha IV. Their only child, Prince Albert, died at age four, and King Kamehameha IV died a year later. It's a sad story. The home was used by the royal family in the mid-1800's. Today it holds artifacts from that time period. Some of the furnishings and memorabilia actually belonged to Queen Emma. Unfortunately, no photography is allowed inside, so I didn't take any pictures. I did, however, find some images on the internet which I am copying here. Don't sue me, please. I did try to buy postcards in the gift shop, but they didn't have any. This photo is of the parlor. Queen Emma acquired this baby grand piano later ...

Cookie Map of Egypt

Katie is studying ancient Egyptian history right now and in the interest of making it more "hands-on" for her, we've joined a co-op at our church. We've been part of the co-op for a long time, but we've not done history with them until now. I was in charge of this week's craft project so I had all the kids make maps of ancient Egypt out of cookie dough. Katie and I made one at home for practice, then we made one again at co-op so the pictures look different as I used some photographs from each session. Each child started out with one full tube of sugar cookie dough. They pressed each one out into a 10x6 inch rectangle as if it were clay or play dough. We used toothpicks to outline where we wanted land formations to be. Then we outlined the Mediterranean Sea with a blue gel. And filled it in with blue icing. We used Twizzlers to outline the Red Sea. Although the Red Sea isn't actually red, there is a seasonal algae there which is red in color. I thought the...