Space Invaders : ‘UFO Cafe’ Sets Down in Santa Paula

It glided right past Ojai. It hovered briefly over Fillmore. Finally, “UFO Cafe” landed in Santa Paula on Wednesday, disrupting commerce slightly and playing havoc with the calendar.

“It’s not every city that will hang out their Christmas decorations in June,” said executive producer Beth Polson, explaining why Santa Paula was chosen for the NBC television movie that started filming Wednesday on Main Street.

It was the first exterior film to be shot in Santa Paula since new rules were adopted April 1, and, by most accounts, it went more smoothly than previous incursions from Hollywood.

“These people are much better,” said Ralph Trueblood, manager of a fabric store.

In the movie, to be broadcast about Thanksgiving, Richard Mulligan plays a retiree who helps an extraterrestrial visitor after the alien’s spaceship breaks down. Nobody believes the old man’s story until the alien--played by Beau Bridges--returns and leaves the spaceship behind. The townspeople turn it into a restaurant and tourist attraction, bringing back prosperity to their dying community.

Producer Randy Siegel said Santa Paula is perfect for the role of a fictitious farm town in southern Utah that the freeway has passed by, where young people move away to find jobs and businesses are closing.

“It has a lot of charm,” Siegel said, waving toward the tree-lined street and grinning Santa Clauses hanging from light poles. “Plus, it’s a small town that does have some of the problems in the film, like vacant stores on Main Street.”

Bouquet Fabrics is normally not one of the vacant stores, but Wednesday morning it was empty, as crew members and extras gathered in front and a giant van took up most of the parking spaces. A scene of Mulligan’s character walking with his grandson was taking longer than expected.

“How much longer is this going to be?” Trueblood asked a crew member who had come in to apologize and to assure him that the shooting would be completed Wednesday.

“If it runs into tomorrow, it’s going to cost me some money,” Trueblood said, adding that he already had four calls complaining about lack of parking.

“This area has been neglected for a long time,” Trueblood said. “We’re trying to build Santa Paula up, and we want people to be able to shop here.”

Trueblood estimated loss of business at $200, which the production company, Corapeake Productions, was paying him.

Down the street at the Santa Paula Florist Shop, Cricket Rieder was arranging delphiniums in the back of the store, apparently enjoying the slump in business. “This doesn’t bother us at all,” she said. “This group has been real good.”

Past movie crews, she said, “just moved in, blocked our driveway, even got snippety with us.”

Such complaints were common last year after three companies filmed downtown in a six-week period, Police Commander Bob Gonzales said. In response, the City Council adopted the tighter rules, which included compensation for lost business, security and traffic control.

The new regulations probably won’t discourage producers seeking a certain type of setting, Corapeake location manager Curt Collins said. “It’s the only town near L.A. with this small-town look.”

“UFO Cafe” producers looked at Fillmore, but “they’re renovating too much,” Siegel said. The movie’s screenwriter, Blair Ferguson, lives in Ojai, but when he suggested shooting there, “everybody felt it was too nice.”

Santa Paula’s role will be limited to outdoor, Main Street-style scenes, all shot on Wednesday. For the main character’s home, a house in Monrovia is being used; his hardware store is in South Pasadena; and the drugstore where he has coffee is in Temple City.

And as much as Santa Paula could probably use a spaceship tourist attraction, it’s not even getting the landing scene. When the “UFO Cafe” touches down, it will be in Valencia.