'Henry's Crime' a local hit already
No filming yet, but actor Reeves is quite an attraction
Keanu Reeves can only hope “Henry’s Crime,” the movie he is due to begin filming in Buffalo later this month, generates the same excitement that his preproduction forays in and around the city are causing.
The Toronto-born actor, who scouted possible locations here in September, stirred up a fuss Wednesday when he returned to check out more sites downtown.
After touring City Court on Niagara Square, Reeves created pedestrian gridlock at Main and Huron streets, where he eyed the former Goldome Bank building as a potential backdrop, observers said. A crowd mainly made up of women gathered after the actor, heavily bearded and wearing shoulder-length hair, stepped from a bus-limousine, coffee in hand, just after 11 a.m.
Several, including Nicole Sheehan of Snyder and Jackie Nocera of the City of Tonawanda, worked up the nerve to break away from other gawkers and ask the star to pose for pictures with them. He quickly obliged.
Kathryn Engel, who works at M&T Bank in the old Goldome building, said police tried to bar picture-taking before Reeves called them off.
“He was very happy to pose for a quick one with us and was extremely kind,” Engel said.
“The guy is great. He was friendly to everybody,” said Deputy Police Commissioner Daniel Derenda, part of the escort assigned to the entourage.
Sheehan even got in a hug before members of Reeves’ party shooed the women away.
Moments later, Mayor Byron W. Brown popped up to chat briefly with Reeves outside Buffalo Place on the Main Street transit mall.
Apparently, some passers-by were not so taken with the hirsute visitor from Hollywood.
“It was funny watching most people just walk by him, oblivious,” reported advertising executive Steve Bell.
Reeves and his crew stopped for coffee in Starbucks at Delaware Avenue and West Chippewa Street before heading to Niagara Falls to look at more possible locations.
Meanwhile, Variety, the show business weekly, reported that Vera Farmiga and James Caan have signed to co-star in “Henry’s Crime,” which it describes as a “Capraesque” romantic comedy in which Reeves “will play a bighearted man who is falsely accused of robbing a bank in Buffalo.” Reeves also will produce the film.
Engel said she was told that the M&T Center branch in the old Goldome building may be the setting for the cinematic heist.
Farmiga reportedly will play the romantic interest of Reeves’ character, though Caan’s role and whether any of his scenes will be shot here were not disclosed.
No starting date has been set for the local filming, “but it’s fair to assume that they are getting closer — probably sometime after Thanksgiving,” said a source who is tuned in to the Hollywood rumor mill.
Buffalo Niagara Film Commissioner Tim Clark, who escorted Reeves’ group, declined to comment.
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