"We did a lot of movies; we did 'When We Were Kings,' the documentary about Mohammad Ali - I play Mohammad Ali, strangely. We did 'Superman' - actually, I shouldn't say that, we had to change the name to something else, 'Incredible Flying Man' I think we changed it to. We did 'Ghostbusters' - that was a masterpiece; we did 'RoboCop,' we did 'Driving Miss Daisy' just to name a few.

"'Ghostbusters' was pretty fun; that one we really went into. We did a little 'King Kong,' too; it was cool. And it was pretty low-budget, the movie; but [Michel] makes up for it with incredible tricks and stuff, and depth perception, and camera tricks.

"He is a very spontaneous director and super creative on every level. He designed and made these home-made props and costumes himself that were unbelievable. And I guess a lot of the time, felt like no one knew what was going on except for him, and by design I think he likes to create a bit of chaos on the set, and then at the last minute focus it and yell out loud to people, 'You do thisŠrah, rah, rah.' And then there's a crazy activity, and everyone's running around, and it creates a really amazing energy; it was really fun."

The store clerks have to construct period flat cars with historical re-creation, transform a washing machine into a space ship for the space odyssey, capture a wild cat with garland beam guns in a fridge for Ghostbusters, etc. They are assisted in these recreations by the locales of the neighborhood.

To find realistic people from the neighborhood, we had the idea to turn to the real Passaic inhabitants. Nice people, going with their life that has not much to do with the film industry which makes them special in my eyes. That seems an obvious and easy idea. Well, it's not. Let me explain why: the film industry is extremely protected by numerous circles and organizations whose only goal is make sure you won't employ anyone out of those circles. In short, this makes it next to impossible to put a fresh face/voice in front of the camera and without a pre-conceived idea how to act. This pre-conceived idea ruins what I am trying to capture on film.

To be authorized those non professional actors; we created a small dance club in the town. We needed a series of dance numbers for the historical re-creation mentioned above. We asked in the street anyone who would be interested by this activity and for one month we gathered twice a week in a Passaic ballroom (used as well as a location). We were 50 people and small groups formed naturally led by anyone will to take the leader role. Rapid progress were made and a lot of great personalities merged from the process, that we could include as characters in the movie.