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We bet the traffic on your evening's commute will be just a bit less excruciating in light of the New York transit strike, but when any huge news story touches the lives of millions, we must first ask the obvious question: how does this event affect the entertainment industry?

Two productions that are going on this week are the Weinstein Co. thriller "Awake," starring Hayden Christensen and Jessica Alba, and the NBC midseason legal drama "Conviction." Both are shooting at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens.


"Awake" production manager Robin Sweet said she had a plan in place Friday, when the strike was first threatened, and it's still the same.

"I have hotel rooms on hold in Long Island City at a Comfort Inn right near the studio and carpools for much of the crew," Sweet said. The production secured 15 passes for private pickup vans from Manhattan, Sweet said, many of which will pick up a mix of production, crew and cast members.

"All of the actors are very understanding," Sweet added.

The strike is not without its hidden benefits, however. For example, for Christensen, it will make it that much harder for Star Wars fans to travel to the set to personally berate him for ruining their treasured mythology. And for Alba, who lives in a befuddlingly parodoxical state of constant fear that the career she built through whoring out her hot body might lead to actually requiring her to whore out her hot body, a few nights of perk-free living at a Comfort Inn while shooting a shoestring feature for the new "lean" Harvey Weinstein might be just the indie-cred biographical bullet points her resume needed for directors to finally see past her perpetually wet and/or leather clad body to the serious artist inside.