Queens House Used for Movie, Owner and Crew Never Get Paid
A Queens woman was approached by a filmmaker to use her house for scenes in a movie. But when it came time for the director to pay up, there was a problem. Can Howard rewrite the ending to this script gone wrong?
Last summer, Mary Freehill was approached by a director named Marc Calixte. He asked her if he could use her house for 2 days to film several movie scenes. Although, there was never a contract drawn up, Mary agreed with the understanding that she would be compensated $1,000 per day.
The scenes were supposedly going to be used in an educational series, called Smart Shorties. The parent company of the production is Spark the Mind. They established a program that uses hip-hop music to help kids learn mathematics. Alex Nesmith and Christine Smith are the founders.
Mary told us that the crew spent around 12 hours a day in the house. They got there at 8’oclock in the morning and stayed till about 8’oclock at night. She told us that her and her family were not allowed in the house during filming but a couple times they asked her to come in, and that’s how she knew what rooms they were shooting.
According to Mary, she said it was quite a production. She says there were about 50 or 60 people that were at her house for both days, doing various production jobs.
Nancy Sirianni was hired as the prop master by Marc Calixte. She worked props from Day 1 of the shoot, which was August 1st through August 23rd.
After the two days of shooting was over at Mary's house, Calixte wrote out a check for $2,000 to Mary for the 2 days that they used her house. She didn’t cash it right away, but when she did it bounced.
Nancy who was hired by Calixte was supposed to get $1875 for her work on the film. Her check also bounced. Nancy also tells us there are almost 60 other people who received bounced checks from Calixte.
The lawyer for Alex Nesmith sent me a very terse voicemail that went something like this “…There will be no comment on this matter!”
Marc Calixte says the whole thing is Nesmith’s fault. He even sent me a few e-mail conversations he had with Nesmith’s attorney to demonstrate that he was negotiating in good faith.
When I asked him what happened to the money he said that Mary waited too long to cash her check! Adding that the money was in there for about a month…Oh Kaaay!
Here’s some advice folks…NYC is an “Industry Town” which means there are plenty of professional organizations an actor or writer can use as a reference. If a director or producer does not have a good reputation with the unions, that should be a red flag!
