THE HOUSE DETECTIVES : Film Industry Checking Out Its Own Back Yard for Locations--but Few Malibu Mansions Will Make the Lineup
The people from “Moonlighting” were looking for a new mansion. The representative of “Knots Landing” was looking for a beach scene. Most of the others were just looking for a new “look.”
Such is the life of a film location manager. They search the far corners of the globe for a spot that may be frozen for a few seconds on celluloid. Their task is to discover the next Tara, to be on the lookout for another Bates Motel, to track down a director’s whimsical view of a new Xanadu.
Rarely do they find it. Instead, they spend much of their time on the road, trudging through a few select houses and offices, accepting what God and man and a designer’s architectural vision have conspired to offer them.
Last week, about 30 location managers from the film, television and advertising industry boarded a nondescript, dull pink bus owned by Los Angeles County to tour 19 massive mansions and more modest million-dollar homes in Malibu. Most of the homes had never been scouted before. Most will never be scouted again.
Dream Home Downgraded
Reaction to one sprawling $6-million manse high on a hill above the Pacific Ocean was typical. After a quick tour, someone’s spectacular dream home was quickly downgraded to just another unacceptable shooting site.
“This is great for stills (advertising camera shots), but it’s an episodic nightmare,” said Geoffrey Smith, location manager for “Knots Landing,” the long-running television soap. “Just a nightmare.”
Too many white walls would make the lighting difficult. Too many low ceilings would make camera equipment impossible to maneuver. Too many stairs leading down to the house. Just too many problems in the house on Broad Beach Road, a place that would have most real estate brokers hyperventilating.
The California Film Commission arranged the tour in conjunction with Malibu Locations Etc. Inc., a firm established last month to sell some of the community’s little-known or new mansions to the industry. The tour was similar in scope to dozens done throughout the state in recent years to budding cinema hot spots such as Yreka, Fresno and San Mateo. But this tour highlighted the film commission’s keen interest on refocusing the film production industry on its own back yard--Los Angeles.
Film commission and industry officials have grown increasingly concerned about “runaway production” in recent years and have been looking for ways to keep production companies from seeking cheaper film sites in other cities, counties, states and countries.
$750 Million Lost
A study released by the state film commission and the California Chamber of Commerce two weeks ago showed that although the state continues to be the No. 1 film location in the world, with industry revenues of more than $3 billion in 1987, at least $750 million was lost to other locations because of difficult filming conditions.
Frank Pierson, a longtime location manager and now director of the county’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, blamed much of the runaway production problem on the jurisdictional maze in Los Angeles. He noted that there are more than 80 different cities, most with different film permit requirements, within the county.
For example, a film production crew filming in Los Angeles must pay $115 to shoot for several days. Yet a one-day permit to film in Beverly Hills costs $731, and the cost triples in San Marino, where producers must pay $2,500.
In addition, the location manager must deal with cantankerous neighbors at some film sites, many of whom expect to be paid for any inconvenience the presence of a camera crew might cause.
“They call it a gratuity and a lot of people actually pay it,” said Bruce Chudacoff, an independent location manager. “But when one company pays the neighbors, it makes it that much tougher for the next group that comes in because all the neighbors have their hands out.”
While many of the neighbors in Malibu are used to seeing film and television stars in town, they rarely see film crews in the seaside haven. Wells said although Malibu beach scenes have been a familiar backdrop in the movies for decades, the huge estates that dot the landscape have not commanded the attention of location managers, who find it easier to shoot in other parts of Los Angeles.
Difficult to Film
“The fact is, Malibu is really not known all that well,” said Donna Cox Wells, a production specialist with the state film commission. “There are two or three house in Malibu that are filmed all the time. But in general, Malibu is a difficult place to film because a lot of the people in the television and film industry live there and they aren’t interested in using their neighborhood and their homes for shooting.”
That’s the reason the famed Malibu Colony, home to dozens of movie stars, is never used for filming. Said Wells: “Why go into a place where you know the neighbors are hostile?”
Diana Klein, one of the partners in Malibu Locations, is doing her best to ensure that hostility to film crews in the coastal community is kept at a minimum. Klein, who got into the business after years of leasing her Cape Cod-style home in Malibu to camera crews, is trying to persuade other homeowners to do the same. As an enticement, she dangles the four- and five-figure amounts that film production companies will pay each day for the use of a home.
Film companies pay between $4,000 and $7,000 per day for the use of most homes, and some property owners charge up to $15,000 per day for allowing film crews to take over.
“People are flattered when they’re asked to use their homes for a film location,” said Klein. “We’ve gotten a lot of interest out here because people in the industry are looking for new locations all the time. They get burned-out using the same properties over and over again.”
Steve Dayan, location manager for the television series “Moonlighting,” said that the show’s producers are constantly looking for new mansions to film.
Big, Open Rooms
“I’m looking for big, open rooms, something that would be easy for production crews to get in and out,” Dayan said. “It’s amazing sometimes the difficulties you run into.”
Chief among the problems film crews dread is lack of parking space. A production crew for a feature film or major television show often includes up to 15 vans, mobile homes and other large vehicles. So a shoot on many of the narrow roads in the canyons and along the beaches in Malibu is virtually impossible.
“There’s all sorts of things you have to look out for,” Dayan said. “If the ceilings are too low, the lighting man throws a fit. If it’s near a construction site, then the sound man will kill me. And if the mobile homes have to be parked far away, the actors will get angry.
“What it comes down to is that every film location is a compromise in one way or another. Some of the homes are too elaborate.”
Too many personal touches create visual distractions and complicate the task of film crews, who often must install backdrops or paint over walls. One of the houses on the tour had a jade floor in the bathroom. Another had frescoes on the walls. One huge mansion had original art pieces throughout, creating a veritable obstacle course for crews. Another had an entrance with an overhang that resembled a mini-hotel.
At times, the group resembled a contingent of foreign visitors on a tour of film stars’ homes. Many of them would depart the bus, cameras in hand, and rush to the house to photograph it before it filled up with the other tour members. As it was, most of the film frames will probably include pictures of the other tour members taking pictures of each other.
Elvis Slept There
The tour included a stop to a home that used to be Rancho Shangri-La, the recording studio used by Bob Dylan and The Band. The owner said Elvis Presley used to stay at the property. Someone suggested that he might still be using it.
Smith said he was on the tour because the “Knots Landing” producers want to bring the look of the show back to its roots.
“Right now we’re horse-oriented,” he said. “We used to be beach-oriented when the show started and I think they want to get back to that.”
Smith, who has been scouting locations for the show for nine years, said he and his colleagues are continually surprised by the condition of some of the impressive-looking properties they visit.
“It’s astounding how bad some of these places look,” he said. “You walk into these stupendous homes and they’ve got an avocado green carpet with orange drapes. In one house we visited, the owner was a big game hunter and had filled one room with a collection of his animals. It had elephant tusks on the door, polar bears mounted everywhere and stuffed monkeys hanging from the staircase. It was horrible.”
The location managers all had horror stories to relay about the problems they face, including several cases where homeowners hoped to parlay any damage caused by the film crews into settlements that could be used to remodel their houses.
That didn’t appear to be a big concern on the Malibu tour, where most of the homes had been recently remodeled or newly built.
“The funny thing about this business is that no matter how many homes you see, you still can’t tell what a house will be like from the outside,” Dayan said. “So in a sense, we’re like detectives, trying to find out everything possible about a place before we move in.
“It’s an interesting thing about our business. You’re only as good as your last location.”
