By Tandy Versyp
In 2005, Sidney Lumet was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award for Directing at the Savannah Film Festival. Lumet, a five time Oscar nominee, has directed such films as “Serpico,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Twelve Angry Men,” “Network” and most recently “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.”
Four years later, the same award SCAD President Paula Wallace handed to Lumet on the opening night of the festival was found in shrubbery lining a three-point intersection in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Rebecca Poole, a stage actor and teacher of the Alexander Technique, was walking her dog, a shih tzu named Fred Sanford in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Greenpoint when she noticed the award hidden in a row of bushes next to the sidewalk.
“I just rescued my dog from a junkyard—that’s where he got his name,” Poole laughed. “So I watch everything he does when I take him out. He was sniffing something at this three-point intersection and was about to pee on it, when I saw it. My first thought was, ‘What the hell?’”
Poole did not know what it was until she read the inscription. Having never heard of SCAD before, Poole thought it might be an art installation.
“A lot of young people and artists who go to Pratt or SVU live in my neighborhood, so around midterms there are all kinds of stuff popping up in Greenpoint,” she said.
Poole left the award in the bushes and went home to do research. After discovering it was a legitimate award, she retrieved and cleaned it.
“I tried contacting the college. I chatted online with someone in admissions, but they didn’t know what to do with it. So now it’s sitting on my bookshelf next to a skeleton. The skeleton is wearing a lei,” she said.
She also posted her finding on newyorkshitty.com—a Greenpoint-centered blog focusing on the random discoveries in the neighborhood—urging Lumet to respond to the post, so she could send it back to him, free of charge.
Lumet nor his office have yet to respond to District or Poole about the discovery. Neither has the Savannah Film Festival’s director of communications.
“It was such a strange and wonderful find. [Lumet] directed ‘Serpico,’ and the real Frank Serpico was shot near my neighborhood,” Poole said. “So that’s interesting, but the whole thing kind of reminds me about the ‘Simpsons’ episode when Homer finds a Grammy. Then he goes, ‘Oh, it’s just a Grammy,’ and throws it over his shoulder.”
