In a recent episode of Girls inspired by the classic Panic in Needle Park, Marnie and Charlie reunite for an adventure that takes them from Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood to the Plaza Hotel to Central Park and ends with Marnie walking barefoot in Chinatown.
To film it, Jenni Konner and Ilene Landress, executive producers of the HBO series, shipped the boat the characters would memorably tip over in Central Park (actually filmed in Staten Island) to a soundstage for rehearsal, filmed underwater in a pool in Chelsea, and spared their actor's feet using virtually invisible moleskin.
Here, Konner and Landress tell Bloomberg Associates’ Katherine Oliver and Jada Yuan of New York Magazine’s Vulture how they put together a creative team with the chemistry they needed--and how they shot in Times Square with a minimum of insanity.