THE QUAKE SCENE : Temblor Trauma Can’t Quite Shake This Director’s Vision

Director Alex Rockwell was planning for an earthquake scene in his new film, “Somebody to Love”--not in his life.

But just before the $4-million independent production was due to shoot the earthquake sequence in a Santa Monica hotel, the real one hit, destroying the location.

“Somebody to Love” stars Rosie Perez, Harvey Keitel, Anthony Quinn, Stanley Tucci, filmmaker Sam Fuller, Latino singer Gerardo and Steve Buscemi (who starred in Rockwell’s last film, the 1992 Sundance Film Festival winner “In the Soup”).

“I was actually living in the Sovereign Hotel, this beautiful old building which I’d decided was the perfect location for the scene, when the quake hit, and I woke up to see the TV fly across the room onto my bed,” reports Rockwell. “I really thought I was going to die, because it’s an old brick structure, five stories high, and the roof caved in. I’ve never lived through anything like it before, and I hope I never do again. It was like being in a plane crash and somehow surviving.”

Rockwell, who was left temporarily homeless with the other hotel residents, subsequently moved into a house in the Hollywood Hills. “I went back to the hotel later to try and get some of my stuff, and the fire marshals let us in for a few minutes,” he adds. “But it was very unnerving as the whole place was creaking and groaning and the ceiling was falling in. Very scary.”

Did it make Rockwell think twice about creating a movie earthquake? “Funnily enough, so many people thought it was a cliche to have an earthquake scene in the film that I’d started to think, ‘Perhaps they’re right.’ But once the real thing hit, I thought, ‘Nah, I don’t think it’s a cliche at all.’ ”

The director had lost not only his temporary home but his ideal location. “The Sovereign was condemned and is now being torn down,” he reports. “And then I couldn’t find another old hotel with the same has-been, decaying feel about it.”

Instead, Rockwell moved the location to a downtown L.A. porno theater. “I just happened to be driving past one day, and I saw this real seedy-looking place, so now the earthquake takes place in the bathroom of a porno theater instead of the hotel,” he says.

The production used a “cheap and simple trick” to simulate an earthquake, Rockwell says. “You can rent these complicated machines called earthquake simulators for thousands of dollars, which we couldn’t afford. So we tied the camera to some bungee wires and then just shook the camera, and had some plaster falling from the ceiling. Let me tell you, the result is incredibly realistic.”