Movie action disrupts normal newsroom activities

Things are pretty crowded this week in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel newsroom in Fort Lauderdale where there’s grumbling among editorial staffers as production of a major motion picture, using the site as movie set, is disrupting normal activities, notes Grumpy Editor.

First came redecoration of the editorial department to give it a 1980s feel for Marley & Me, a best-selling 2005 memoir by Sun-Sentinel columnist John Grogan.  Marley is a lovable, unruly Labrador Retriever.

Then came carts of movie equipment, yards of electric cables, followed by more than 100 crew members and 80 extras.  All this during normal hours when real staffers were trying to put out a newspaper.

The film, starring Alan Arkin, Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston, concludes four days of filming Thursday.  It is scheduled for release on Christmas Day.

Usually when a motion picture production unit uses a genuine newspaper as a set, the action rolls off hours --- either past deadlines or on weekends when things are less hectic.

The Sun-Sentinel Tuesday reports not everyone is excited about working in a newsroom-turned-movie-set.  Staff writer Jon Burstein complains that when he came into the office “my computer screen wasn't working." Turns out it had been unplugged by someone charging a cell phone.

The Sun-Sentinel adds most of the day was taken up by a single scene shot so many times, reporters and editors could repeat verbatim the dialogue involving Arkin who plays the editor.