I’m riding in a mostly-empty L train in the direction of Rockaway Parkway. When the doors open at the third or fourth stop in Brooklyn the train car is invaded by a film crew. A dozen or so members of the team, all young, rush in – and, in a frenzied but highly orchestrated choreography, take position at my end of the car, occupying all the seats around me. I think of getting up to move, but my presence doesn’t seem to bother anyone, and my annoyance at the disruption is quickly overruled by my curiosity as to how this thing will play out. As soon as the technicians are organized they set about preparing for the shot. The director sets the parameters: ‘Okay folks, we’ve got eight stops, let’s get the scene.’ I watch, dumbfounded, as the assistant DP deftly switches out a lens (‘I need an 85mm’), the sounds guy mics the actors, and five or six other assistants adjust their devices, all within the span of 1-2 minutes. Meanwhile the train pulls in and out of stations. At this hour and traveling in this direction there are few passengers – conditions the film crew must have banked on – for it’s clear this is a small production with a limited budget, and probably no permit. When everything is ready a clapboard is struck and the director calls out ‘Action!’ From where I’m sitting in the midst of this small crew I have not only a perfect view of the actors, but of the DP’s video display recording the action. As the scene unfolds, my gaze switches back and forth between the live ‘action’ and the scene on the monitor – e.g. between the real and the mise-en-scène. And what is truly uncanny in this bifurcated performance unfolding before me is that the scene being depicted, a failed pick-up attempt that precipitates a heated conversation about gender, sexual mores and dating, is that the dialogue, the expressions, the micro-gestures are astonishingly naturalistic. ‘This could be real,’ I think to myself, as the scene ends and the director calls out, ‘Ok, let’s go again, one more time from the top.’ But then, as the actors return to the top of the scene and run through the same dialogue, I start to wonder whether the ‘naturalism’ I’m so convinced by is itself a product of the entertainment industry. That is: have I been so conditioned by watching dialogue in film and television that I’m imposing the standards of filmic realism on reality itself? In any case, what matters to the film crew surrounding me is how realistic the dialogue appears on film (I notice that I’m actually the only one staring directly at the actors – the entire film crew is looking only at their screens or clipboards). Finally my stop arrives. As I get up I scan the rest of the subway car: none of the other passengers appear to be paying the least amount of attention to the film crew.