A look inside Hollywood and the movies. : STAR SEARCH : Well, You Have to Admit S.A. <i> Sounds</i> a Lot Like L.A.

Producer-director Taylor Hackford and his company went to San Antonio hoping to find locations that could double for Los Angeles for his new film about three cousins growing up in East L.A.

When they got there, they realized that the city’s flat barrios in no way resemble the more urban, hilly look of Los Angeles. But they did find someone they hadn’t been able to find in Los Angeles--an artist whose paintings looked like he lived in L.A.

The filmmakers had been searching Los Angeles for an unknown Latino artist whose work evokes a feeling of the barrio. One of the characters in the film is an artist, and his artwork will be featured prominently. Hackford said that production designer Bruno Rubeo, “happened to go into the Jansen-Perez Gallery and was immediately blown away when he saw the work of Adan Hernandez.

“What was astounding about Adan’s work was that it had all the elements of Southern California’s geography--fires in the hills and palm trees,” said Hackford, the writer and director of “An Officer and a Gentleman” and co-producer of “La Bamba.”

In addition, Hackford said, “We looked around Los Angeles, but the art scene is so developed here that many (of the artists) have already been discovered.”

The film is tentatively titled “Blood In . . . Blood Out,” and Hackford expects it to be the first of two movies telling the 15-year story of the three cousins. The story follows the artist character’s work over three periods of his development. “The art we needed had to evoke the grass-roots Chicano ethos,” Hackford said. His company made Hernandez an offer to provide the art for the film.

At the Jansen-Perez Gallery, none of the attention coming Hernandez’s way is a surprise. Co-owner Sofia Gonzalez Perez said that two of the artist’s works, one an oil and another a pastel study, were purchased by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. One of Hernandez’s works, “Hay un Rio,” was reproduced for a billboard--there’s one on the Sunset Strip--promoting San Antonio as a film location.

Production designer Rubeo bought an original Hernandez for his own collection.

Perez said Hernandez’s work “is very expressionistic and intensively pushes the imagery of the barrio. It could be Los Angeles, but it happens to be San Antonio.”

Hackford’s film is now being shot in East L.A. Walt Disney Studios’ distribution arm Buena Vista will distribute at an undetermined date.