Filming of Ad at Cemetery Spurs Crusade by Widower

It was a beautiful grave.

It lay beside a clapboard pioneer church, painted white and blue--the real pioneer church of Chatsworth, transplanted from its turn-of-the-century foundation to the rustic cemetery at the foot of the Santa Susana Mountains. Everything there had the look of a pastoral scene from a movie.

It never occurred to Joseph Hallam, when he buried his wife there in June, that her plot might soon become a pastoral setting in a movie, or as it happened, an automobile ad.

Hallam’s illusion of his wife’s eternal peace was shattered last Saturday morning when he went to visit her grave and observed a commotion on the other side of the church.

“I noticed all of these trucks all over the place,” Hallam said. “And cameras and people. People running all over the place. Even the little flowers that were put on the graves, people were stomping all over them.”

The action centered on a white sports car parked amid the grave markers under a canopy stretched over poles. An equipment truck was backed onto the grass.

“I think it’s just disgraceful,” said the 62-year-old, portly and mild-mannered Hallam, owner of a Chatsworth computer firm that repairs sophisticated Defense Department computers.

“When you put somebody you love in that ground, you don’t want anybody fooling around with it. It’s the code of decency. There are things you do and things you don’t do. Everybody knows that.”

With a businessman’s self-assurance, he set out to right it, first going to report the transgression to the Oakwood cemetery’s general manager, Norman Ruppert.

“He said, ‘There’s no law against it.’ ” Hallam said. “I said, ‘There should be.’ He said, ‘That’s your right to think what you want.’ ”

To his horror, Hallam soon learned that no law, trade standard or custom spells out the accepted conduct of the ubiquitous Hollywood film crew when it enters the sanctity of the graveyard.

“Cemeteries, really, are almost like little towns or cities,” said Robert Fells, assistant secretary of the Cemetery Consumer Service Council in Washington. “Cemeteries, generally speaking, have great latitude in promulgating rules and regulations within their boundaries.”

In an interview, Ruppert later confirmed Hallam’s version of their conversation and said he sees nothing wrong with bringing film crews into the cemetery.

No one else has ever objected to practice, he said.

“Really, our families have been elated that Oakwood has been selected to make a film. They feel that adds prestige.”

Though he had never before fallen under the spell of a cause, Hallam said he is now committed to his first.

“I don’t think people ought to run around on the graves and I don’t think dirty old trucks ought to drive around on the graves,” he said.

Under the current state of the law, however, there may be little he can do.

Fells, of the Consumer Service Council, said no federal law regulates cemeteries. Although a statute in California’s penal code prohibits desecration of graves, the law is vague as to what constitutes a desecration.

Filming in itself is not. Rather, it is encouraged. The California Film Commission in Los Angeles, a state agency set up to promote filming in the state, maintains three loose-leaf binders on cemeteries in its library. In the Los Angeles County volume, pages of color photographs display the somber mausoleums, tombstoned vistas and classical statuary of 12 cemeteries that seek filming.

Contracts negotiated between the cemetery and the production company can bring in $1,000 or more a day, an industry expert said. It is up to the parties to that contract to establish a code of conduct.

Practices vary from cemetery to cemetery.

Jack Lazenby, general manager of Evergreen Cemetery in Los Angeles, where a scene for Knott’s Landing was filmed this year, said he forbids the names of real tombstones from being filmed and scrutinizes proposals closely to preserve decorum.

“We do not allow any bombings, car chasings, cops and robbers,” Lazenby said.

Trucks Restricted

Lazenby and Mary Dougherty, general manager of Rosedale Cemetery, agreed that they would not allow trucks to drive over grave stones, or even grassy areas off the roadways. Both said they restrict filming to areas where there are no internments.

Ruppert regards those sensibilities as slightly strained.

“You can’t help but have equipment,” he said. “Just like us. We have to run tractors and backhoe. We’d never dig a grave if we didn’t. There are some shots in cemeteries, they’re just going to have equipment.”

Anyone who objects to the shooting of a scene can complain to the California Cemetery Board. Phyllis Thanes, service analyst for the board, said all complaints would be investigated to determine whether graves had been desecrated.

“It would all depend on the extent of what was going on,” Thanes said.

So far, she said, the board has received only one such complaint, that from a woman who said she recognized an actual crypt in a film. There was not enough information to pursue it, Thanes said.

Permit Required

The City of Los Angeles also requires a permit for every location filming, whether on public or private property, and can negotiate terms of conduct. Dirk Beving, director of the city’s Motion Picture and TV Coordinating Office, said he spends most of his energy working out the closure of major streets and has heard no complaints about filming in cemeteries.

Similarly, Fells of the Cemetery Consumer Service Council, said he has received no complaints about filming in cemeteries.

Fells, too, was equivocal about the propriety of equipment infringing on grave sites.

“In general, it is quite inappropriate to drive any type of vehicle over a grave,” he said. But he also conceded that florists, monument dealers and cemetery staff drive over graves.

Ultimately, he said, it is an individual question that each cemetery board would have to decide.

“I think they would take community feelings into consideration, the lot owner and the relatives.”

Ruppert suggested that Hallam will adjust to the prevailing attitude.

“His wife just recently passed away,” he said. “He’s still in that acute grieving state.”

Hallam is not so sanguine.

“There’s one thing for sure, I’m never going to give up until it’s stopped because everyone knows it’s wrong.”