Beam Them Up, Anthony

By Rachel
October 8, 2007 - 7:43 AM

The cast of CSI: New York took this year's cast photo to a whole new level.

The inspiration for the season four promotional image was "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper", a photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets in 1932. In the original photograph, eleven construction workers ate lunch while perched hundreds of feet above New York City. To recreate the image for the New York cast, the principle actors from the show were suspended several feet above the ground on a beam. "We want to just capture a piece of New York ambiance and New York history," explained show creator Anthony Zuiker. "We thought, what better than to be inspired by this particular photograph?"

"I think it's a strong choice for the show," said Eddie Cahill (Don Flack). He also said it was nice to get inspiration from an image that fellow cast member Hill Harper (Dr Sheldon Hawkes) described as "iconically New York City." Melina Kanakaredes (Stella Bonasera) thought that using the photograph as inspiration was "new and interesting" and brought some excitement to the image. "I think it's kinda neat to do something that's both historical and fabulous and quintessential New York and at the same time make it our own," she said.

While on The Early Show, Gary Sinise (Mac Taylor) explained that there was more to the photograph than the obvious comparison to "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper." He said that there were also clues to be taken from the poses of each member of the cast. "There's little stories going on in that picture, little things going on," he said. He pointed out the position of Carmine Giovinazzo (Danny Messer) and Anna Belknap (Lindsay Monroe) as indicating the relationship between the two investigators, but he did not specify what else could be learned about all of the characters. "You've got to look for clues in the picture and see if you can figure it out," he said.

Zuiker said that the cast photo paralleled the original photograph. He described the builders captured in "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" as "the heroes in the twenties." They were the men who were building the city itself. He compared that to the characters portrayed in this New York cast photo. "Now you have these heroes in 2007 which are actual CSIs solving crimes for Manhattan," he explained. "We carried on the heroicness from the twenties to 2007, and there's a nice little bridge there. It's an homage to them, but it's also sort of a star in the hat of our show."

The behind-the-scenes video can be watched below, courtesy of CBS on YouTube. Sinise's appearance on The Early Show can also be watched on that site as well.