After dealing with this meter maid, you’ll be begging to just receive a ticket.
A hilarious online video starring actress Jenni Ruiza provides parking attendants everywhere with a little revenge after she lifts a rude New York City cab driver’s vehicle up in the air – shocking a number of passersby.
The 5-foot-3 Ruiza, 28, was dressed as a meter maid who ticketed a cab driven by stuntman Bob Cotter. The driver had a few choice New York style expressions for the meter maid after she told him to move the car, so she physically helped him by picking up the front on her own.
“That’s girl power” remarked one very amused elderly woman.
The Bronx resident told the Daily News she and Cotter were both New Yorkers and they improvised their dialogue as they performed the stunt nearly a hundred times in different parts of Manhattan over four days last month.
Cotter chose several expletives and Ruiza, unable to curse because she was portraying a city employee, worked in subtle ways to display some attitude. She routinely grunted and pumped her arms after she placed the car back on the ground.
“The person you see in the video is totally me,” she said. “(The role) was a dream come true. We’re both New Yorkers, we don’t take any s–t, and we get in your face.”
The director Michael Krivicka gave them some very simple suggestions.
“Be New York, be crazy,” Ruiza said.
The action got heated enough that two actual city parking enforcement officers rushed over to help Ruiza out. They also carefully examined the vehicle to determine if the cab was parked legally before the crew provided them with their permits, Ruiza said.
A company created a prop vehicle that doesn’t actually drive but was designed to look like a New York cab. The front was emptied and the back was made to be extra heavy so it could be moved up easily.
“We just put stoppers on the back so it wouldn’t topple over,” Krivicka told The News. “We didn’t want Jenni to catapult over.”
Ruiza said it was about as heavy as her 30-pound dog, but over the course of the shooting it proved challenging.
“Doing it 20 times a day for four days, by the time it was done my arms were ripped,” she said.
The video was made to promote a new tech start up called Car Lister that launched this week and helps people sell their vehicles. The idea of the video was selling a vehicle on the website is as easy as lifting the car, said Krivicka, co-founder of Thinkmodo, which produced the video.
The 39-year-old director from the West Village said they shot the stunt in the Upper West Side, SoHo and the Flatiron District. He said they wanted the meter maid who was petite but also had a lot of charisma and would be funny and interesting.
Ruiza was perfect, he said.
“It’s a situation a lot of people can relate to,” he said. “The reactions we got were people processing ‘what the h–l did I just see? What just happened?'”
By Joel Landau [Daily News]