The missing scene

For filmmakers, Boston is a great set. Hundreds of movies have been made here over the years, and so stars come and stars go.

Except for what we read in newspapers, however, most of us never notice until the film is released, and then, suddenly, we're watching famous movie stars in settings that are intimate to us because they are in the neighborhoods where we live and work and play.

Now, after three weeks here, the cast of ''The Departed" will wrap things up and leave town this week, although some stars will return next month. Thanks to gossip columnists, we learned that Martin Sheen went to the Pops concert on the Esplanade, that Jack Nicholson ordered lobster at Anthony's Pier 4, and that Matt Damon stopped by Sonsie for red leaf salad.

Still, as usual, most of us never caught a glimpse of them.

But then, in the late 1960s, when Ali MacGraw came to Boston to film ''Love Story," we were pretty busy and so we never saw her cavorting around Harvard Yard. When William Friedkin directed ''The Brink's Job," he used 65 locations around Boston, but we never bumped into Peter Falk and never saw Gena Rowlands. When they filmed ''The Verdict" at Suffolk Superior Court and the cast was hanging out at Quincy Market, we never got a chance to shake hands with Paul Newman or James Mason and never got to tell Charlotte Rampling how much we loved her in ''Farewell, My Lovely." Or was that Sylvia Miles? Whatever.

No luck with Steve McQueen either. When he was here to make ''The Thomas Crown Affair," we missed him at Anthony's Pier 4, and we were not invited to sip champagne with him at the Myopia Hunt Club. Robert Mitchum's hard to miss, but we managed to do so when he was here to play a mug in ''The Friends of Eddie Coyle." Never saw Jeff Bridges when he filmed ''Blown Away" or Holly Hunter filming ''Once Around" or Cliff Robertson making ''Charly." Ditto Meryl Streep sculling on the Charles in ''The River Wild" or Tony Curtis when he was here to film ''The Boston Strangler," although we once had a drink with someone who played a cameo role -- Jack Hynes, the former TV anchor.

Gossip columnists couldn't get enough of Clint Eastwood when he was in Boston to film ''Mystic River," but on the day he was at a gym in the Ladder District, bench-pressing 250 pounds, we were somewhere else.

One exception is Ben Affleck, so ubiquitous you don't want to see him. But when he was here filming ''Good Will Hunting," nearly everybody did. Not us, although we did have a close encounter. We spotted him coming down the street, but we ducked into a doorway until he passed by.

For the press as well as for fans, keeping up with the cast of ''The Departed" has been tougher than it was during the filming of previous movies in Boston. The stars of ''Mystic River," by comparison, seemed to enjoy interacting with Bostonians. Each day, a publicist announced the film sites, which enabled groupies to show up. Also, the cast lived in one hotel, the Ritz-Carlton, Boston Common, which made it easy for the press to track them.

Not so with ''The Departed." Without a release of a daily schedule, photographers, reporters, gawkers, and geeks alike all have had to rely on word of mouth to learn the location of each day's shooting, and often by the time fans arrived the action had moved to another site. Many in the cast have been reclusive as well as elusive, some said to be staying in hotels, some in rental apartments, and others, presumably, in private homes. The result: It has been difficult to find them.

Maybe you saw the trucks or gargantuan white trailers lined up next to the Public Garden or along the streets of South Boston, Dorchester, Chelsea, Chinatown, and, last Friday, in the Port Norfolk section of Dorchester, but even the most rabid movie fans are more likely to walk on by and resist the temptation to show up at a shoot, which is customarily a long, tedious, and utterly boring experience.

Still, there are fanatics who will endure any discomfort to watch the filming of any scene, however vile the weather, however absurd the hour, however obscure the actors, however fleeting the glimpse of them.

On a day last week when rain drenched Boston Common, Lisa Eloi of Stoughton arrived at 9 in the morning and was still there at 4 in the afternoon, standing under her umbrella and watching the filming of a rugby match, directed by Martin Scorsese, who kept himself generally dry under a tent, emerging periodically and briefly to rearrange actors in the scrum.

The sky was heavy. Bells tolled from historic Park Street Church. From the set, the cries of ''action" and ''cut" echoed across the same muddy field where, more than two centuries earlier, British Redcoats trained to fight against the colonists in the Revolutionary War.

''In fact, I have a picture of Matt Damon with my daughter," said Eloi, reaching for her digital camera.

Flicking buttons, she finds the photograph and holds up the camera to show the image of a smiling Damon in muddy rugby uniform standing next to her daughter, who was there all day herself, as an extra, playing a fan watching the rugby players.

''Matt Damon was very nice," said Eloi. ''I didn't want to snap his picture without asking him, and so, when I did ask, he said, sure, no problem. Also, Mark Wahlberg was supposed to be here today, but he's not. And that guy in the blue shirt wearing No. 9," she said, pointing to the mud encrusted actor, James Badge Dale, ''I don't know who he is, but he has big lines."

Not everyone shares her enthusiasm.

Bud Hodgkins was so annoyed to see a photograph in the newspaper of a woman on a rooftop, standing in two wastebaskets to protect her feet in a puddle of water and peering at a scene being filmed for ''The Departed," that he was moved to ask: ''Can someone tell me what is wrong with these people who will do just about anything to see a star? It's so annoying.

''I live in Tewksbury, but if I were in Boston, I wouldn't go to watch them film. Someone needs to tell these [fans] to get a life," he said. ''The actors in Boston the past few weeks put their pants on the same way we do. They just happen to get rich doing a job where they make believe they are doing a job they really can't do."

The closest Hodgkins has been to a filming in Boston occurred when the 1972 movie ''Fuzz" was made here. Hodgkins recalls being on an Orange Line train, passing through Charlestown, when he peered out the window to see a film crew at work, but the experience was not unpleasant, for the star was Raquel Welch.

Jack Thomas can be reached at thomas@globe.com.