That is the Poe Cottage in the Bronx.  The last home Poe resided in before he died.  We had hoped to make it our Tell-Tale musicabre movie murder home.

But alas, it is not to be!

Most of the short film adaptation of my chamber music theater horror show will be filmed on constructed movie sets.  But there is one half day of location shooting scheduled to shoot the entrance (and some interiors) of the home where the man who insists he is no madman kills the old man with the pale blue vulture eye, only to be driven to frenzied confession by the beating of the heart of the dismembered corpse under the bedroom floor boards.

When we heard about the Poe Cottage in the Bronx, run as a museum by the Bronx Historical Society, then learned it was available for film shoots, and perused pictures of it, we knew we had to shoot our location scenes there.

According to the Poe Cottage website, “the historic house museum is famous as the final home of the writer. At the time that Poe, his ailing wife Virginia and mother-in-law, Mrs. Maria Clemm moved in during the spring of 1846, the house was owned by John Valentine. Poe rented it for $100 per year. Virginia died in the house in 1847 and after Poe’s death on October 7, 1849 while in Baltimore, Mrs. Clemm moved out.”

How cool would it be to put in the credits of a film of the Tell-Tale Heart: “filmed on location at the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Bronx”.

Alas, it is not to be!

The Poe cottage administrators informed us that they changed their insurance policy for 2019 and with this new insurance policy they are no longer able to host film shoots.

Which is a real shame,  because our shoot was already designed to be completely unobtrusive.  Except for the opening of a door there would be no need for us to even touch any of the structure, let alone do anything else that might threaten damages.

Ah well, luckily, I have a friend with a very nice old house in Midwood, Brooklyn.  And he will allow us to use his home to get those crucial few location shots of the Tell-Tale Murder House.

I have already conducted an official location scout with my D.P. and A.D. (Director of Photography and Assistant Director) at the place (and sent pics to my Production Designer) and everybody is happy with it.

Yet it would have been nice to include “filmed on location at the Edgar Allan Poe Cottage, Bronx” in the final credits, wouldn’t it?

But alas, it is not to be.