A funny thing happened to Brett Ratner on the way to reviving Smell-o-Vision for a generation deprived of the aromatic arts: He tried filming Anton Yelchin and Olivia Thirlby fucking in a tree. In Central Park! Never one to do anything the easy way, Ratner bravely faced down layers of Gotham bureaucracy in the pursuit of his six-minute segment of the forthcoming omnibus film New York, I Love You:

"You can do what you want in Central Park, unless you're doing it for a film," Ratner tells us. "Then, you can't touch anything. Olivia weighs about 80 pounds, but we weren't allowed to have her hanging from a tree. We had to buy a dead tree from a prop house and bring it to Central Park. We also couldn't walk on the grass, so we had to get a crane to stand the tree up on concrete, then put grass and mulch around it, so it looked real. ... It was insane."

It's like Ratner's own little tormented Herzog film; Fitzcarratner, perhaps, in which the embattled fauxteur, six minutes from "one of the most talked-about segments in the anthology," quits grab-assing extras long enough to guide a small army of crew members and a dead-tree-wielding crane inch-by-inch through the treacherous trails of Central Park. "No, no, no, Anton, not like that" he says before shooing the young actor away from his limb-dangling waif and closing in with his sweaty mitts. "Like... this. Hold still, Olivia." Some guys will do anything for their art.

• Brett Ratner goes out on a limb in NYC [NYDN]

Tags: anton yelchin | brett ratner | new york i love you | olivia thirlby | out on a limb