Today, side effects I have a treat for you! A dedicated fan of this page, Kaitlin, was lucky enough to live fairly close to the set of The Fault in Our Stars, the movie adaptation of John Green’s novel of the same name. Kaitlin had an awesome experience and took lots of pictures and was super awesome enough to share her experience with us!

Here is a little bit about Kaitlin herself:

I’m a political young professional who works in Pittsburgh. I love taking advantage of the wonderful opportunities this city offers me, like the filming of movies and other huge events. 

I’ve been lucky to be able to set stalk many movie sets, like TFIOS, The Dark Knight, Perks of Being a Wallflower, Les Miserables (Broadway show), etc. I have loved each and every opportunity! Often, I tweet when I am going somewhere, or to the celebs that I meet. You can find me as Kaitb1103 on Twitter. 

I am so happy to have Kaitlin as a guest blogger today, to share her experience. Here it is!

Kaitlin’s Awesome The Fault in Our Stars Set Experience! 

I’m an avid fan of TFIOS, ever since I read it at the beginning of the year. After that, I became a huge Nerdfighter. You can imagine my excitement when I found out that TFIOS was shooting in PGH!

After spending every waking moment following a thread of TFIOS shooting locations for every week that they’ve been here, I finally found that they’d be at an easily accessible location all the week of September 15-20th. You see, like most people in Pittsburgh, I’m a public transportation rider. And as TFIOS takes place in Indianapolis but is filming in Pittsburgh, they’ve been sticking to outlying Pittsburgh locations that can’t be reached by public transit.

So September 18th, I packed up my books (Divergent, Insurgent and TFIOS), and headed to work downtown. As soon as I could leave, I hopped on a bus toward the ‘rumored’ film site.

After getting off the bus, I ran into a few young high schoolers (I’m nearly 22). They had already wandered about and had been there for nearly an hour. I walked down the public streets taking photos of everything that seemed interesting.

The Code Name they use for The Fault in Our Stars. Who knows how they came up with that name! 

This is one of the prop trailers. This photo doesn’t do it justice! It’s HUGE with prop cabinets filled to the brim on BOTH sides

The ambulance that they take Gus away in. 

The star trailers! 

I spotted Gus’s crutches, the ambulance he’d be riding in (which the crew was rigging to hold a camera on the back), and the star trailers! The actual set house they were using was closed off.

I went back up to wait with the other girls, and a little later, we saw a tall young gentleman being escorted by security down the street off the set and toward the trailers. It was Ansel! He was wearing tan slacks, and a blue shirt with white tie, and had a cigarette (!!!) hanging from his mouth.

He later tweeted:

One of the girls and I were brave enough to follow him down the sidewalk, but they other girls waited until we ‘called’ for them.

Sadly, all our hollering did nothing and he didn’t turn around, though he did smile.

The girl and I were dejected, and we’re turning to walk up toward the corner again, when Shailene Woodley walked out of the set. “You’re…Shailene Woodley.” “Yeah, yeah, I am.” At this point, the girls had all swooped in, and though I did get my book signed, I didn’t get a photo with her :( Ah, well!

The girls and I went back to our little corner, forced to by the cops that showed up, and then another older girl like myself showed up. She’s been a Nerdfighter for 8 years, and said she only cared about meeting John Green and the others were bonuses if they came out! We all agreed, but then, I had all day to wait with no other plans.

We waited for about another ten minutes, and all of a sudden, John Green comes out from another entrance to say hello! He smiles but he says he only has about five minutes to take photos and sign books. We all takes some “selfies” with John Green controlling the phones! He somehow managed to keep the set out of all the photos so he wouldn’t get yelled at by the producers of the film. He apparently gets yelled at on a daily basis, according to Ansel.

After John Green goes back inside, the other girls all leave right away. I was all by myself! The Franktuary food truck (famous in PGH for amazing hot dogs and fries) had showed up with hot dogs for the crew for a few minutes before the girls left.

The Franktuary truck! this is the Franktuary food truck that, according to John Green himself and his tumblr/twitter, Shailene Woodley catered/bought for the staff to eat from that day!

I waited for another five minutes or so before John Green comes out again (this time out of the entrance we had been watching) and comes right over. He asks me where the others went; my answer was something along the lines of “They all left me :( but I’m prepared to be here all night if need be!” He asked who I was looking to meet (Ansel Elgort) and said he’d see what he could do, but no promises!

Then he offered to “buy” me a hot dog (apparently Shailene Woodley catered Franktuary, so indirectly Shai bought me a hot dog!), and then was ‘fixing’ it for me, at which I said, “John Green…you really don’t have to make my hot dog for me. I’ll totally make it, but I just want to make sure I can go past these cops before coming over there…”

Fast forward to finishing my hot dog, the stand-ins come out and go back in five seconds later, and then boom! A super, tall handsome actor (Ansel Elgort!) comes striding out and walks right over!!!!

Ansel: “You sent John Green into get me? How’d you swing that?”
Me: “Well, he offered, but made no promises! Thank you for coming over to say hi! How’s filming going?”
Ansel: “Well, its going great! We’re in Amsterdam right now!” (They were filming the hotel scenes in Amsterdam at a place called Mansion on 5th)
Me: “That’s awesome. Are you excited for Divergent coming out soon?”
Ansel: “I am! It was a lot of fun to shoot! Are you excited about Carrie coming out?”
Me: “Um, yes! Do you mind if I get a photo with you?”
Ansel: “Sure!”

And que multiple selfies being taken but me not realizing it, so my “OMG I’M SO JUST FREAKING HAPPY” face being the same in each one! And then he signed my book, I wished him luck with the rest of filming, and I left while he got in line for a hot dog.

End to a perfect, fantastic day!

Signed by: Scott Neustadter (screenwriter of TFIOS movie), Michael Weber (second screenwriter for the film), John Green and Ansel Elgort

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Thank you SO much Kaitlin for sharing your experience with me and the readers of What A Nerd Girl Says! I know that I am SO jealous of your awesome experience and that others will be too! Such a lucky duck!

I can’t wait to see this movie in theaters, and to see Shailene and Ansel in Divergent in March!

Hope you enjoyed hearing about Kaitlin’s experience!