Movie Keeps Finest City’s Finest Secret

The problem with promoting San Diego is that it works too well.

Sure, it brings money and jobs into the local economy but it also brings people, permanently. They get a peek at the place and it’s goodby Kansas, hello Clairemont.

The freeways get more crowded and the lines at the Price Club get longer. We’re being sunk by success.

But now an answer is at hand. Don’t worry. Be happy. The movie “K-9,” starring Jim Belushi, is now among us.

It’s standard-issue police movie: wise-guy cop, pencil-pushing superiors, restless girlfriend, bad guys, car chases, crotch jokes.

Dirty Harry as played by Bill Murray.

At one point a bad guy takes a fatal tumble off a building. Belushi looks down at him and tells us: “Now there’s a guy who definitely has the right to remain silent.”

It’s the same role Belushi played in “Red Heat,” set in Chicago. The only difference is that this time the comic-serious partner role went not to Arnold Schwarzenegger but to a German shepherd named Jerry Lee. (A review of the film is on Page 17 of Calendar.)

Shot almost entirely in San Diego, “K-9” provided employment for an estimated 1,600 locals and pumped $3 million into the economy.

That’s the good news. Now the really good news: Not a single person who watches “K-9” will be prompted to move to San Diego, and if they are, they can probably be redirected to National City without being the wiser.

Except for a quickie scene on the beach at Coronado, “K-9” presents the drabbest view of San Diego imaginable: as a forest of telephone poles, garbage can-filled alleys, commercial strips and pool halls, all seen on the smoggiest day of the century. Not even interestingly decadent, just drab.

Anyone looking for a “Miami Vice” of the West Coast, a sunny city for shady people, will be sorely disappointed.

The final scene is the best. It’s a nighttime helicopter shot of a city, lights shimmering, mountains in the background, quite elegant. But the city shown is Las Vegas.

Looks like a nice place to live, too.

F as in Fail, E as in Ethics

As judicial officer at San Diego State University, Michael Car metes out punishment to students caught cheating.

Sometimes an F is sufficient. Sometimes a student is suspended. And sometimes the offense shows that the student is unfit for his or her chosen field of study and should be required to pick a new major.

A recent case fit the third category. Car decided that two students had somehow missed the academic message rather badly and should try another field.

The two had been caught cheating in a course on business ethics.

Anything to Help the Poor

Social activism, San Diego style.

The Hot Body ’89 contest, a “bikini challenge” between the girls of Texas and the girls of California, is set for tonight at the Kona Kai Resort: sponsored by a Dallas promoter, admission $10, for a night of dancing, music and bikinis.

Half the proceeds go to a group pledging to help the homeless.

Look Who’s Complaining

It was a routine “Dear Friend” political letter--sent by San Diego Councilman Bob Filner to generate support for Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s possible campaign for state attorney general.

The response it provoked was anything but routine: a two-page blast at Reiner (“an embarrassment . . . showboater . . . one of the biggest egos in American public life . . . a tall man of little stature . . . “) and a vow to raise money for Reiner’s opponent, whoever he or she may be.

The author of the diatribe? Former Councilman Michael Schaefer, who was one of dozens of one-time Filner contributors who received the let’s-help-Ira appeal.

Schaefer did not attend a gathering hosted by Filner so San Diegans could get to know Reiner. He didn’t need to. He already knows him.

While Reiner was L.A. city attorney, he prosecuted Schaefer for refusing to clean up his rat- and roach-infested apartments, sending Schaefer to jail for six days.

Reiner declines to talk about Schaefer. But Schaefer talks plenty about Reiner: “The guy is a political glory hog.”