Bushwick is a hotbed of activity for film production, in part because the neighborhood’s streets offer a panoply of classic New York scenery—and the many warehouses can function as great studios.
Today, the stretch of Central Avenue southeast of Flushing is standing in for New York in the ’70s during the rise of the porn industry in a shoot for HBO’s “The Deuce,” which stars student-actor-scholar-fiction writer-producer James Franco as a pair of twins who get involved with the mob. Franco headlines alongside Maggie Gyllenhaal, who plays a sex worker with an entrepreneurial spirit, in this show, which is directed by David Simon of “The Wire” and “Treme” fame.
A filming notice for HBO’s “The Deuce.” Emilie Ruscoe for Bushwick Daily.
HBO isn’t the only big name shooting in the neighborhood this week: on Thursday night, several blocks of Broadway by the Kosciuszko J station will be transformed into the streets of the fictional city of Gotham for a shoot of the popular superhero show of the same name about how Bruce Wayne became Batman.
The FOX show is part origin story and part crime procedural and is set in a metropolis which is not quite New York and not quite Chicago. The case of the live action TV show was recently renewed for its third season, which is set to air in September of this year, and it shoots in Steiner Studios and elsewhere around NYC.
Perhaps you’ll catch a glimpse of a celeb or superhero if you walk past one of these shoots!
Cover: Franco at the New York Film Critics Series via Wikimedia Commons