Actor with fake gun nabbed by police during film shoot

When the cops roared up to the neighborhood market in the San Francisco neighborhood of Cole Valley, it appeared they had an armed bandit on their hands.

The guy seemed primed for business with his gun pointed in the air and refusing the officers’ demand that he toss down the weapon, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.  Things like this happen in the big city.

But then the would-be bandit uttered something that caught the police off-guard.

“It’s a movie,” he said.

The 41-year-old stick-up man, later identified as David Lupin, turned out to be an actor who was pulling off a mock hold-up at the Alpha Market while a Japan-based film company was shooting the scene from across the street, the newspaper said. The weapon? A replica. Total plastic.

"We were shooting about a stupid crime -- a little segment people can laugh about," Yasmine Yoshida, filming coordinator with Duo Creative Communications, told the Chronicle.

"It's supposed to be funny, but all of a sudden it wasn't funny at all," he added.

The shoot was for an upcoming episode of “World's Most Interesting Footage," which is shot in San Francisco in English and then dubbed into Japanese.

"It's a very popular show," Yoshida said.

Alas, the cameras weren’t rolling when the real action started.

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-- Steve Marble