Last week, a surprising cluster of 1950s European cars occupied some prime parking spots on Lexington Avenue and 75th Street in New York City. A low-slung and curvaceous Jaguar XK120 and a cherry red Allard K2, both six-figure specimens, were separated by a periwinkle Citroen H-Type work van. Across the avenue, these outliers were echoed by a trio of Citroen Traction Avant sedans. Beyond these cars was the venerable French bistro Orsay, its mahogany-stained front capped by a cloth awning featuring Parisian Metro-esque Art Nouveau lettering. Between the curb and façade, a familiar sidewalk scuttle defined the scene as an NYC film shoot. Craft services tables were piled with soda cans and snack bags, PAs with clipboards attempted to reroute recalcitrant pedestrians, techs held aloft parachute-sized plane reflectors to capture the light.
Here, Josh Safdie — one half of the acclaimed New York sibling duo responsible for the tense Adam Sandler crime thriller Uncut Gems and the edgy Robert Pattinson vehicle Good Time — was filming his buzzy solo feature Marty Supreme, with an unlikely A-list cast including Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Fran Drescher and, in his film debut, Tyler, the Creator. Information on the movie’s plot has been highly guarded. The leaks have been even more bizarre, suggesting it centers on a professional ping-pong player (!) in the 1950s, and the paparazzi have run wild, capturing Chalamet galivanting around the Big Apple in glasses and clothing that make him resemble a cosplay Jean-Paul Sartre. But unless the film was also set in some alternate reality, the flamboyant automobiles parked along Orsay didn’t exactly conjure midcentury New York.
“We’re shooting in three different places around the city and one on Long Island to establish this as 1950s Paris,” said flak-jacketed, mustached and red baseball-capped Jake Gouverneur, vice president of Octane Film Cars, when I found him. “The cars sell the location.”
From left, a periwinkle Citroen H-Type work van and a cherry-red Allard K2 on the ‘Marty Supreme’ set.
Brett Berk
The company procures oddball vehicles for movie, television and commercial shoots in the New York area. “There are other bigger players, but people think of us in terms of hard-to-find cars.” He had trucked in the four French cars personally for a week-long shoot. The Brits were brought in by their individual owners, who sat on a stoop next to him, gabbing. “Those cars are worth real money,” Gouverneur said. “They want to be near them at all times.”
Octane has worked on all manner of productions in and around New York, including HBO Max’s Sex and the City reboot And Just Like That, Amazon’s mid-20th century Borscht Belter The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, FX’s Cold War spy drama The Americans, and Searchlight’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, also starring Chalamet.
Marty Supreme set
Brett Berk
According to Gouverneur, the celebrity cast was inside the restaurant, shooting outward, making the gathered cars little but convincing street furniture. Background players in period costume — an ill-fitting brown suit, a longshoreman’s jacket (no berets, thankfully) — walked back and forth holding a briefcase, a cigarette and a shopping bag (no baguettes, thankfully). Occasionally, Gouverneur said, one of these extras would have to drive one of the cars. This is the trickiest part of his job.
“There are all of these questions. How does this work? How does that work? Where’s the cup holder?” he said. “Plus, just starting old cars can be dicey. These all started when they were supposed to, thank goodness.”
Sometimes, the ask for vehicles is very specific. Other times, as with this shoot, it is a little looser. “The brief here was ‘1950s France. What would work?’” Octane curated a representative list, along with photos and details, and each was approved by the production. Gouverneur’s company is a stickler for period correctness. “But whether that advice is followed is another question,” he said. To wit, an Octane 1984 Lincoln limousine once played its much older 1950s cousin on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel because the director needed the cast to be facing one another on board, a seating innovation that hadn’t yet been popularized during the show’s actual time period.
Octane has obtained all manner of eccentric cars: an archaic 1910 Ford Model T, a three-wheeled 1950s Messerschmidt microcar and a 1960s Oldsmobile concept car, just to name a few. And they don’t just do automobiles. “We will get whatever you need: train, boat, moped, vintage golf carts. I once took a set designer to look at a helicopter in Delaware,” Gouverneur said. “We have yet to do a submarine, but, fingers crossed.”
The company maintains a large collection of vintage vehicles in garages outside of New York but will find or rent whatever it doesn’t have through its networks of vintage car dealers, collectors and repair shops. Sometimes, it even needs to purchase cars and in multiples. For the forthcoming Netflix limited series, Black Rabbit, which recently filmed in New York, Octane bought four matching 1980s Jaguar XJ6 sedans, which were involved in all manner of onscreen antics. “We shot out the windows of the stunt car,” Gouverneur said. “We needed five sets of windows.”
Asked about the specific challenges of shooting cars in New York, a city that is markedly inhospitable to the automobile, Gouverneur said, “What’s not a challenge?” and laughed. “Noise, people, selfies, subways, parking.” He pointed at a pile of stale bread someone had dumped next to one of the six-figure classics, which had attracted a flock of birds. “Pigeons.”
A Volvo 240 sedan was once stolen right from set. On another occasion, a shoot for a Mark Ruffalo movie, a vacant upstate car dealership outfitted with 20 vintage Octane cars burned down. (“The consensus was arson,” Gouverneur said.) But as far as he knew, no unintentional collisions have ever occurred in any of the company’s cars. The production’s insurance covers any damage. “Once the cars are on set, it’s the studio’s responsibility, and whatever misfortune may happen is on them,” Gouverneur said.
Given pre-dawn call times, interminable setups, post-dusk wraps, and middle-of-the-night commutes in a car carrier loaded with other people’s precious collectibles, does Gouverneur find the job taxing? “It’s kind of like being a firefighter,” he said, shrugging. “It’s a lot of nothing. But you have to be ready for something disastrous to happen at any moment.” He paused and looked in the direction of the craft services table. “Also, if you’re not careful, you can eat a lot.”
