THEY WENT THATAWAY : Around L.A., Movie Crews Can Be Tough Acts to Follow

By all means, let the tourists chase themselves dizzy around L.A.’s flossier parts, following Coolidge Administration-era maps to the stars’ homes as if they were on some posthumous scavenger hunt: “I can’t get over it--I’m standing in front of Theda Bara’s house !”

Keep selling them those maps. Keep herding them toward Universal Studios. Just keep them away from the real business of making movies.

For it doesn’t happen in Beverly Hills (at least not without a fight, I suspect). It happens down by the railroad tracks and among the lofts and warehouses. It happens late at night and early in the morning, in the old financial district, at City Hall and, once, in front of my house.

There are no maps to these places; there are only signs. On street corners, on telephone poles, caught among the paper clutter of garage-sale notices and Lost cat--reward! posters. The signs are nailed up or stapled up, an obscure, cryptic word or two, often scribbled in black marker on fluorescent cardboard.

“Black Dog” . . . “Sand” . . . “After the Game.” And then the slash of an arrow. Follow the arrow far enough, and you’ll find someone filming commercials, movies, TV shows, music videos, student films. The city’s “shoot sheet” averages more than 50 locations a day. Look for them far from tourist sites, their signs encoded in words that tip off crew and cast without announcing “Hey, we’re making a movie here!”

An acquaintance who used to do such things for a living tells me that movie crews often take a word from the film title or production company name “but also try to make it look like directions to a party” to throw people off the scent. For years, my friend says, Sylvester Stallone’s crews used “Muscle” on their signs. “Sly” would have been a giveaway, “Todd and Marsha’s wedding” too broad a temptation for someone cruising for a good time to wreck.

An erstwhile location manager who became a director has sometimes thought about “what people think when they see these signs, whether they wonder what they are.” (In the Midwest, maybe; here, the best defense is an eyes-front lack of curiosity.)

If, after all this, you still want to go location-trolling, keep in mind that these are movie shoots, not premieres. The most you’re likely to see is zip, as in zip, shoot the scene, zip, back to the trailer, zip--gone. In between are tedious episodes of technicians setting up lights and cameras, eating frequent meals and doing work that looks like an outdoor shop class. Chess matches have brought crowds to their feet more readily.

The feature film made at the elementary school across from my house in the ‘80s (I won’t mention the name, but “Mars” may help you) was stupefyingly boring to watch, both in the making and on the small screen. Oddly enough, what the director was seeing through his camera showed up simultaneously on my TV set.

But that was only after I was allowed back in my own house. For perhaps a half-hour, I sat in neutral in my car, the needle rising on my thermostat and two weeks’ worth of groceries puddling in the back of the car as Officer Protect-And-Serve told me I couldn’t pull into my own driveway lest I ruin the scene.

Maybe that’s why movies are so often shot among the warehouses and so early or late: Residents don’t take kindly to the attitude that “We’re filming here” ranks in importance with “We’re curing polio here.” Jonas Salk never blocked my driveway.

The best location-shoot sign I ever saw was a green-and-white Goofy face framed inside an arrow pointing right, the elaborate leftover from some Disney shoot. Friends and I retrieved it from a post and affixed it to an office desk lamp, where it pointed at an editor who didn’t notice until tour groups began snickering.

At least they weren’t taking pictures.