Have you ever seen ‘Law & Order’? I mean the original one, not one of the twenty three spin-offs. Well watch the courtroom scenes in the first five seasons. Notice anything odd? Ever observe that the jury is always seated? Never entering or exiting the courtroom through the door of the jury box, which presumably leads to the jury room. This story is the fight for that door, how I won, and why I’ll never watch ‘Law & Order.’
At some point while scouting locations for the original series, the show zeroed in on the Tweed Courthouse in Lower Manhattan. The Tweed Courthouse, named for Tammany boss William Marcy Tweed, began construction in 1868 at a planned cost of $500,000 and was not completed until 1871 with $8,000,000 spent. Tweed has a center rotunda that has entrances on Chambers Street straight across through to another entrance behind City Hall. I loved to tell visitors to my office how a major part of the fraud involved materiel being brought in through Chambers Street and leaving right out through the City Hall door to be resold with the taxpayer footing the bill. This was where the expression “In one door and out the other” came into being. The reason all the columns in Tweed are wood but appear marble is due to the graft and corruption.
As Tweed was originally built as a working courthouse each courtroom had high,high ceilings, wood paneled walls, and wood paneled double doors. The rest of the building with a tall center rotunda, faux marble columns, and large staircases gave the air of an old dusty courthouse. This would have been perfect, I assume, for a T.V. crew with its equipment as Tweed’s wide hallways would have accommodated that nicely.
A deal was struck between Dick Wolf, the Executive Producer of ‘Law & Order’ and the Dinkins Administration to let them use one courtroom on the third floor of the building. Dick Wolf, at his expense, would convert that into a sound stage/courtroom. They would get use of the courtroom, various other rooms in the building, and access to Tweed at no cost, for as long as they wanted, as they saw fit, and with virtually no oversight.
Now bear in mind Tweed was and had been part of the Mayor’s Office for many years. Key mayoral offices and staff were located there. Business and meetings were conducted there every day. I cannot speak to what kind of neighbors the ‘Law & Order’ people made when the Dinkins people were in residence but by the time we took office, they had complete run of the building. They were the rudest, most arrogant, inconsiderate people; treated us like dirt and were getting all this for free! It wasn’t lost on us that these Hollywood people were also smarting from the election results and were no Rudy lovers. They clearly had wanted Dinkins to be re-elected. One of the major problems that we encountered with Tweed, besides the squalor, were the rats. The building was overrun with rats; huge rats, the size of cats, populated the building everywhere. Like Winston Smith in ‘1984’, my death fear was rats.
Coming to work every morning was a ritual for me which involved praying that my
secretary or deputy had arrived first. If not, I would bang the double doors to
my outer office loudly to get the rats scurrying before I walked in. I hated to
walk in to the sight of them running across Mabel’s desk. God, how I hated that.
The three big contributing factors I discovered for the rats were:
1. The Dinkins people were just pigs. Given the way we had found the place and the stories we heard from the civil servants, they existed like animals. It was no wonder there continued to be rats in such numbers. Who would put up with a problem like this for four years without addressing it?
2. Unlike every other office building under City control or in America for that matter, trash in Tweed was picked up in the mornings rather than at the end of the business day. Therefore, all the lunch trash accumulated and sat there overnight. Crazy, right? I noticed this immediately. Tweed was under the control of City Hall. All City government buildings with the exception of City Hall were controlled by the Department of General Services (DGS). The woman who ran these matters for City Hall was a Dinkins holdover for some crazy reason and wouldn’t change the trash pick-up. I begged the Commissioner of DGS to take the service over. He was completely sympathetic and said he’d do it in a minute. In fact he had a plan to do it, but was precluded, as it was a City Hall function. Every day I saw the rats on Mabel’s desk and I froze. They were huge rats. How could people work like this?
One day I was giving Mabel dictation. Behind my desk were two cabinets on the wall. Suddenly, Mabel pushed back her chair and screamed. I turned to see what had frightened her. Along one cabinet crawled the mother of all rats up the wall. A second later, along the other cabinet crawled up the wall its companion. I shared her fright. I don’t know how I was able to go back to work after that.
A week later Mabel buzzes me that the Mayor is on the phone. “Yes Mayor,” I say. “I’ve just told Bill Diamond to get me whatever paperwork is necessary to transfer Tweed over to him,” he said referring to the Commissioner of DGS. “I heard about those rats in your office. That’s terrible. I’m sorry. We’ll get it done. Therese is here, she told me,” Rudy said. “I appreciate that greatly, Mayor. Everyone in the building will,” I responded. Therese McManus, the Mayor’s Director of Scheduling and Advance was in the van with the Mayor. She had told him the story as I had relayed it to her and he had acted on the spot. Within a few days DGS had taken over Tweed. There was an immediate, noticeable difference.
3. We had driven out the Dinkins people and I had changed us over from City
Hall to DGS but the last major problem relating to the rats I could see no way
around. ‘Law & Order’
Craft Services was
leaving food everywhere. The rats were feeding off it.
When they were filming a season of ‘Law & Order’ it seemed like they were
there every day of the week, they may have been. The deal originally worked out
was that they were given that one courtroom/set, another old courtroom (that
hadn’t been used in years) for extras as a holding room, and another room as a
changing space. That’s it. Everything else would be done with trailers outside.
Many a morning I would come to work and Michael Moriarty would be in my conference room using my phone. Later it would be Sam Waterston. No apologies, no excuses. I would always kick them out. I wasn’t stargazed about any of this. Everyone in the building had the exact same stories. The show’s production assistants would be yelling at us all the time, and I mean all the time, to be quiet. One time telling at the Mayor’s Senior Advisor to “Shut Up!” That was what we lived with every day; nasty twenty year old kids with headsets yelling at us - honestly thinking this T.V. show was more important than bringing down welfare rolls or the murder rate. I guess if you’re twenty and it’s your job, it is. But is was no fun living like that; hopping over cables everywhere, the hallways lined with racks of costumes, and all these nasty Dick Wolf employees. With each season the show became more successful and the nastier they became.
I should mention at this point that the door to the jury room that they never went through was in fact right behind my desk chair. Right next to the cabinets the rats crawled up. My office opened up directly onto the rotunda, a shot frequently seen in ‘Law & Order’. You’ll often see Moriarty or Waterston and other cast members walking out of the courtroom towards the rotunda past my office. Me and my staff would often find our doorway blocked when trying to head out to a meeting. Or conversely we would find out that guests who were trying to head up to our office were held up by P.A.s for a shot. No notice or consultation would ever be given to us. No heads up,- ever.
I’d spoken to Joe Lhota, Deputy Mayor John Dyson’s Chief of Staff about all
this. Dyson was in charge of the Film Office which facilitated these issues.
Joe thought as I did, that this whole arrangement was insane. We had helped finance
huge amounts of studio space throughout the city and here we were competing
with it in Tweed. Crazy! Not to mention the disruption to staff. But Dyson was
swayed by the City’s Film Commissioner Pat Scott that this scheme somehow benefited the city.
The denouement to all this happened one day when I came to work and found two police officers posted outside my outer office door. It took me a second to realize they were extras dressed as cops. Something about their bearing gave them away as actors and not real cops. I asked them to remove themselves. I had guests coming shortly for a meeting in my conference room. I didn’t want them to be greeted by cops in my doorway. They said they couldn’t move, the director had told them to stand there. I went into my office. I was steamed and getting hotter.
An hour later I was waiting for the meeting to start. Some of the participants were late. Finally they walked in and announced that the phony cops had prevented them from entering. That was it for me. I ran out into the rotunda, - filming was clearly going on. I screamed, “CUT!!” The director came up to me. He was flustered and flabbergasted. No one screams cut on a film set but the director. “What the fuck is going on?” I asked. “Get those phony cops away from my office door now or I’ll have the P.D. here pronto.” I turned and left. The phony cops were removed.
The next day Dick Wolf’s office called to set up an appointment. I guess the
idea was to calm nerves, to placate me. They did not want a repeat of that episode -
I’m sure of that. They sent one of the producers to see me. I don’t know who
they thought I was or what frame of mind I was in about their show but this guy
misjudged the situation and me. He was a total Hollywood asshole, even if he
may have been from New York. “Disharmony?” He said. “Really?, I had no idea. I
thought our staff behaved beautifully,” he lied. But it was a useful meeting
because as with all pompous assholes he gave more than he got. “We’ve
been trying to take over your office for over a year now. Pat Scott has been
lobbying Deputy Mayor Dyson to get you moved out of this space so that we can
show the jury going in and out of the courtroom,” he helpfully explained.
Really? I thought Pat Scott told me she was trying hard to work out these
relations between the crew and the mayoral staff. She wanted to create better
working relations, she told me once at a Gracie Mansion event.
Lying, duplicitous, bitch, I thought. Trying to move me out of my office. Well OK. They wanted a full time enemy, I had room on my plate for another one. I
swore to get them moved out.
I started with my friend Tony Carbonetti and Joe Lhota but anytime I could find a useful ally I would enlist them to whisper in the Mayor’s ear about the deal that Dinkins had cut with these people. I’m not stupid. I knew how to get Dyson and Giuliani to turn red. Mention Dinkins and sweetheart deal in the same sentence. Compare it to the deal they cut with the U.S. Open. Repeat this over and over and stir. Get Lategano on board once it takes hold as she was smitten with Dick Wolf at first. She’ll automatically side with any Hollywood type unless Rudy is against the issue and then she’s a powerful ally. That’s why I needed him on the right side first. Then get her on-board second. All this made any Pat Scott objection irrelevant. Soon Dick Wolf decided to look elsewhere for his courtroom set.
He settled on Chelsea Piers on the Hudson River waterfront. They tore down all the paneling from the courtroom next door to my office. They removed everything installed, carted it away and rebuilt it exactly as was in the new courtroom set at Chelsea Piers. In fact, you as a viewer would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the courtroom set from one season to the next in Tweed and the one at Chelsea Piers. Except of course in the new set the door next to the jury box opens and closes to allow the jury access to the jury room. I can never watch that without thinking they’re walking right past my desk into my office. But then again I don’t watch ‘Law & Order’
