former crew member remembers
Well, I only worked about 2 weeks on the set and received all the free pizza I could eat, (and about $100 week's pay, if I remember right), but I did have more fun on this movie than any other. I also put in time on Crocodile Dundee and Eat and Run, both shot throughout N.Y.C. But Street Trash clearly was the most memorable, in that I got hands-on experience doing the 'melt effects' with numerous globs of paint, washed a lot of the Viper bottles between takes, and even had an opportunity to help with the SteadyCam.
The other movies paid better but were boring to work on.
About five years after I worked on Street Trash, I got to see the movie, (which ran very briefly in a local Vermont theater, then was pulled due to complaints - especially due to one very infamous scene that is probably well known to most appreciative fans); and I have to say, I was quite proud to see my name, Jim Willard, roll past at the very end of the credits.
I'm now a chip engineer, doing entirely different things, but one of the cumulative moments of my short-lived film career was when I participated, however briefly, in that Brooklyn junkyard, on what I can now proudly consider, one of the cult 'trash' classics of all time. I'm very much proud of my accomplishment. The VHS occupies a prominent space in my movie library...
Whatever happened to everyone else on that crew, I wonder?...
Jim Willard
vtwillard@sbclgobal.net