The Coen Brothers, who made such movies as Fargo, No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Big Lebowski are in town filming their next movie, "A Serious Man". The movie is about a Jewish kid growing up in St. Louis Park in 1967. They have started filming in a Bloomington neighborhood and a Roseville cafe and have plans to shoot in Edina, Normandale Community College and various other areas.The spot in Bloomington that they are filing at is a stretch of road on 4th ave in between e 84th street and e 86th street. They chose this location because there was a storm a few years back that took out much of the trees on the street and forced the residents to plant new ones. The houses are all built in the 1960s, so with a little remodeling, this whole block looks straight out of 1967. Workers came in weeks before filming started and gave the residents of 8 select houses new sod lawns, narrowed the driveways and poured gravel, created new 60's-esque facades on the front of the houses and also put fake fireplaces on a few of the houses for added realism.The day before fiming started (Labor Day) I went to take a look and found that the 2 streets parallel to the street they were to be filming on, were going to be used for parking and all the power trailers and stuff. they have cables all down the street going through peoples back yards and leading onto the acatual street from behind the houses. there were lots of big trucks with "universal studios" on the sides.
The next day, I went back in the early evening to see if I could see some actual filming going on but arrived about 30 minutes after they had finished for the day. All of the old 60's cars were still in their spots (some of the modern cars had some in as people wanted to get back in their houses). I actually got to wander around the street where they had just finished filming on so I took some pictures of the houses that are to be in the movie.
Overall neighborhood shot:
Production crew and trailers:
This bus is going to be in a scene. Its a really old bus and they added the Hebrew writing on the side since this movie is about a Jewish kid.
I went back on thursday and went down one of the parallel streets and actually got a good shot of filming going on through the back yard of one of the houses!
The crew's base came is a couple blocks away in the parking lot of a church:
Thats all for now. I dont know if they are still going to be filming exterior shots on 4th ave anymore but Ill try to get some more shots of actual filming. If I hear any news on any other locations, Ill be there getting pics!
