A low-budget indie film shooting inside a Long Island convenience store got a dose of real life drama last night when a passerby mistook a robbery scene for the real thing and called the cops. Twenty officers responded to the call, and when they arrived at the scene, they saw a man pointing a gun at another man behind the register. The director was filming from the back of the store with a small high-definition camera and no movie lights, so it was not immediately clear to cops that they were charging into an imaginary holdup with guns drawn.

"The first officer arrives, looks in the window and he sees a gentleman with a gun pointed at the counter," Nassau County Police spokesman Vincent Garcia tells the Daily News. "So he enters the store and confronts the individual, and says, 'Police, drop the gun.' The individual puts his hands up in the air and says, 'It's a movie! It's a movie!... The officer used great restraint in not firing his weapon. Even when the officers were in the store they did not see the camera." According to Garcia, the officer repeated his order to drop the gun several times before forcibly disarming the actor. No arrests were made.

The role of the store owner was played by actual Cool Stop manager Sanjay Patel, who tells Newsday, "I thought it was part of the movie." Even director Fred Carpenter, who also wrote the script, was confused: "For a moment I thought they were part of the movie then I thought, wait a minute, I didn't write this scene. It was very tense for a while." His movie, Jesse, concerns a Nassau County Police detective who is investigating the death of her brother who was killed by the mob. Carpenter was supposed to film a scene at the Nassau County Police Headquarters today, but that shoot has been canceled.