San Diego a Hit With Film Makers

The plot of “Grand Slam,” a prime time television series launched last night on CBS, revolves around a San Diego bail-bond business in which a Hispanic low-rider and a white ex-major league baseball player are uneasy partners.

The comedy, like the hour and a half television special of the same name that debuted after the Super Bowl Sunday night, features authentic San Diego scenes in which the two modern-day bounty hunters stalk their prey through Horton Plaza, aboard the San Diego Trolley and across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The trouble is, except for those few signature San Diego scenes, most of the television special and subsequent series was filmed not in America’s Finest City but in Los Angeles. Although television viewers generally can’t tell the difference, local film technicians, actors, actresses and even hoteliers know that every production day spent in Los Angeles means less employment and dollars dropped in San Diego.

“It was too expensive to house the cast and crew,” said the show’s producer Bill Norton, who initially considered shooting the entire television special in San Diego. “Besides, while there are certain things of course we have to be there for, we can actually fake San Diego fairly well.”

San Diego may never host as many film production crews as the capital of movie land, but not for a lack of effort on the part of the San Diego Motion Picture and Television Commission, which is funded by the hotel room tax and is managed by the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce.

The 13-year-old city film commission, one of the oldest of its kind in the nation, is charged with the often unglamorous job of luring production crews to San Diego and solving their production problems once they arrive. A staff of five, operating on a $362,000 annual budget, acts as production liaisons, sniffing out settings and getting the necessary permits and cooperation from local government officials, businessmen and residents.

After a 1988 slump caused by a writer’s strike that cast a pall over the movie industry in general, San Diego bounced back last year with particular vigor as a host city for movie productions. In 1989, “My Blue Heaven,” a Warner Bros. movie starring Steve Martin, and Paramount’s “Flight of the Intruder,” both to be released this summer, were among the 230 productions shot in San Diego.

Hollywood-based television and film production crews shooting on location in San Diego during fiscal 1989 spent a record $14.1 million--or almost triple the expenditures of the year before--on such diverse expenses as hotel rooms, dry cleaning, gasoline and lumber, according to producers surveyed by the San Diego Motion Picture & Television Commission.

Even with the writer’s strike, San Diego’s figures represented a substantial increase over the previous three years, which had held steady at about $8 million, said San Diego Motion Picture & Television Commission Director Wally Schlotter.

San Diego also played host to out-of-town movie and television production crews for a total of 31,117 hotel room nights, or nearly double the number in 1988. The crews, who spent a record 1,644 shooting days in San Diego, also provided jobs for 4,167 locals, or more than 750 people than were employed the year before.

“I knew the year was going to be good, but I didn’t realize how good” until the numbers were added and verified, Schlotter said. “I think what we’re really seeing in that $14-million figure is a coming of age of our system and service, not only in the ability of our staff to stay one step ahead of (producers’) needs, but also in the support of our liaisons throughout the county.”

When compared to San Diego’s entire tourist industry, which generated more than $3 billion in visitor spending money last year and about 8 million hotel room nights sold, the figures seem inconsequential. But Joe O’Kane, former president of the Assn. of Film Commissioners International, said: “What the crew actually spends is a fraction of the economic impact.”

What really matters, he and others say, is the exposure a television show or feature film gives a city. The television series “Simon and Simon,” which was set (and partially filmed) in San Diego for eight years ending 1988, today is broadcast in such far-flung places as Australia, Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia. How many viewers decided to visit San Diego after seeing the show’s opening scenes cannot be calculated, but many suspect the show has had a substantial impact on the traveling decisions of many visitors.

The movie “Top Gun” starring Tom Cruise, for example, put Miramar Naval Station on the map for tourists, said Al Reese, spokesman for the San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau.

“Since that movie came out, we have observed a great increase in interest by the public in seeing Miramar Naval Station,” Reese said. “Before “Top Gun,” most people outside our area here had no idea what Miramar was.”

Although it is difficult to compare the effectiveness of San Diego’s film commission with that of other cities, producers interviewed for this story unanimously agree that San Diego has come a long way since 1976, when problems prompted producers of the television show “Harry-O” to abandon San Diego for Los Angeles.

Charles Gordon, who produced “K-9,” a feature film starring James Belushi that was filmed entirely in San Diego in 1987, said the San Diego film commission “bent over backwards for us. It was one of the easiest shoots we had.

“San Diego is never going to compete (with Los Angeles) in television productions because financially it’s hard to go on location. It’s always more expensive to make a movie out of town.”

But, he added, “you see more and more people going where the story dictates. It’s never going to be Hollywood, but I’d come back to shoot there in a second.”

IMPACT OF FILM PRODUCTION

The economic effects of motion picture production in San Diego County.

1988 1989 Money spent $5.39 million $14.15 million Shooting days 1,356 1,644 Hotel room nights 15,818 31,117 Fees for police $51,886 $120,367 Locals employed 3,412 4,167

Source: San Diego Motion Picture & Television Commission .