COVER STORY : Stealing the Scene : With Its Beaches, Scenic Skyline, Queen Mary and Dome, Long Beach Is Attracting More Movie Makers

Ray Yoro was doing some paperwork in his office on Ocean Boulevard recently when a car blew up outside his window. The accountant glanced up just in time to see a ball of orange flame zooming skyward and, on the pavement, a blackened wreck still shuddering from the blast.

No big deal. “Just another look-alike explosion,” Yoro said.

Movie makers were at it again in Long Beach.

The city, from its lofty skyline and expansive beaches to its cozy bungalows and idiosyncratic stores, is fast becoming one of Hollywood’s favorite locales.

“Everything’s here,” says Murray Miller, location manager for “How to Make an American Quilt,” a multi-generational American saga being filmed by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment in Long Beach and elsewhere during the past month.

As he talks, Miller stands next to the Belmont Olympic Pool, magically transformed into a mountain spring, complete with Fiberglas boulders and a wall-sized photographic slide of trees and bushes.

As the actors prepare to plunge into the ersatz spring, Miller says, “It’s an actual swimming hole up in Santa Barbara County. If we shot the scene up there, the actors could contract hypothermia.”

Long Beach may not really have everything, but it offers enough to send a procession of movie and television studio scouts nosing through the city. There’s the Queen Mary, with its frosted glass and polished steel interiors. There’s the spacious geodesic dome that once housed the Spruce Goose, where “Batman Forever” has been secretly evolving for nine months. There are broad, uncrowded beaches--”Baywatch” country--and a classic small-town airport terminal.

And there’s a stretch of Shoreline Drive that can become an instant freeway set, where stuntmen and explosives experts can create automotive havoc, such as that exhibited in the summer action hit “Speed,” without interrupting normal freeway traffic.

The city, recognizing the economic value of all this, is going after the movie business with a passion. “We’re developing a reputation as a film-friendly city,” says Jo Ann Burns, Long Beach’s film liaison.

*

A recent study showed that the industry, including feature films, television shows and commercials, spent $52 million on production costs in Long Beach in 1992, the most recent year for which figures are available. It’s a relatively modest amount, not even qualifying Long Beach for the county’s top 10, city officials acknowledge.

But things have been cooking in the past two years, they say. Revenue from city permit fees--$250 for the application, $400 a day for shooting--have been increasing steadily. Last year, more than 40 feature films were shot entirely or in parts of Long Beach, compared to 25 in 1992. The city expects to bring in about $100,000 this year in fees alone, compared with $73,000 two years ago.

There have been so many bizarre scenes on Long Beach’s streets--from elaborately choreographed car crashes to dives off the deck of the Queen Mary--that some residents have become blase about it all.

A grizzled man in an Army jacket watched last month as a film crew set up a shot of three teen-agers in a red convertible for a Paramount production called “Clueless.” It was a simple shot, with a camera truck towing the convertible as it cruised past downtown Long Beach.

The man shook his head impatiently. “I like it when they blow the cars up,” he said.

Long Beach’s success has a lot to do with some highly desirable locations.

For one thing, there’s The Dome, with its 140,000 square feet of pillar-less space. Parts of “The Last Action Hero” were shot there, then the feature film “Stargate” took it over in 1993 for almost a full year.

The Batman production, operating with the secrecy of World War II’s Manhattan Project, has been there since last March. On a quick tour of the facility recently, there were intriguing glimpses of the Bat Cave and Bruce Wayne’s mansion, with faux marble fireplaces and curving stairways, and a dark stretch of subway tunnel, all encased in wooden scaffolding and lighting towers.

The Dome is five times larger than the largest stage at Warner Bros., says Batman producer Peter Mcgregor-Scott. “Consequently, we’re able to build an almost unlimited number of sets.”

Though The Dome is 30 miles from the studio lot, it has been a bargain for the production. “It’s hard to be specific from the financial aspect, but we’re filming on one set and preparing to film on the next,” Mcgregor-Scott says. “We move literally across 20 feet to start filming on the next set. That’s a great advantage, rather than moving to a whole new sound stage.”

Joseph F. Prevratil, president of the company that runs both The Dome and the Queen Mary, would not reveal how much he charges for use of either facility. “But I can tell you we bring in more than $500,000 a year for The Dome alone,” he said.

The Queen Mary keeps up a busy filming schedule of its own. “There’s no other boat in town,” says the ship’s location manager, Tom Witherspoon, referring not just to Long Beach but to Southern California.

*

Two weeks ago, the ship, which is permanently anchored in Long Beach Harbor, served for the third time as a stand-in for the Titanic in NBC’s upcoming “No Greater Love,” based on the Danielle Steel novel. The ship was also used in “S.O.S. Titanic” and “Raise The Titanic.”

For three days, men in ankle-length overcoats and homburgs strolled the ship’s plank decks and varnished corridors with women in cloaks and birthday-cake hats, oblivious to their imminent appointment with a large piece of ice.

Then there’s Shoreline Drive.

Try finding a stretch of freeway where you can block traffic for a week or more while you film traffic mayhem. That’s precisely what Sun Valley-based PM Entertainment needed last September to shoot “Last Man Standing,” an action adventure scheduled either to be sold to HBO or distributed directly to video stores.

“It’s very difficult, especially if you want to blow up cars,” says Marta Merrifield, a producer with the company.

Caltrans didn’t have much to offer, Merrifield says. “They gave us a couple of options but they weren’t very visual,” she says. Then her location scouts discovered the westbound Shoreline Drive, which curves around the southern edge of Long Beach between the Downtown Marina and the city’s jumble of glass office towers.

*

Close it down? No problem, city officials said. Police just rerouted the usually light traffic, turning the eastbound side into a two-way street, and, voila , there was a half-mile-long, four-lane freeway, complete with exit ramps, ready for filming.

For 10 days in September, there were hair-raising chases, with police cars doing mid-air flips and stunt men being dragged along the pavement behind a speeding armored car. At least 25 cars were detonated, as the movie’s hero, played by Canadian actor Jeff Wincott, chased a gang of heist artists with a penchant for blowing up vehicles.

“I can’t say enough about Long Beach,” says Merrifield. “The sheer fact that they let us close down the road, that there were trees and color and the city--it was great. And they let us do our explosions.”

There are benefits from all this to the city and its residents. A study by the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers last year showed that a ripple effect more than doubles the number of jobs created by the production of movies, television and commercials. In 1992, while 164,000 people were directly employed by the industry in California, 184,000 were indirectly employed by suppliers or industry-related service companies.

*

Long Beach businesses have not been getting rich from movie making, but some are experiencing modest benefits.

For example, Chuck’s Coffee Shop across the street from the Belmont Pool got a shot in the arm during a slow period last month, when the pool was used as a set by two different productions. The little restaurant was often jammed with grips and carpenters clamoring for milk shakes or “The Weasel,” Chuck’s patented scrambled-eggs-and-chili dish.

“It was a nice little boost in the wallet,” says Chuck Tinkler, founder and owner.

Joe Jost’s, a bar on Anaheim Street, has been drawing location scouts looking for the ambience of an old-fashioned neighborhood tavern. The 70-year-old bar, with wooden booths and walls plastered with old photographs of customers, was used for a scene in “The Bodyguard,” as well as in numerous beer commercials.

When filming is in progress, the bar closes down. Filmmakers “pay very well,” Buck says.

At the same time, Anaheim Street Ace Hardware, across the street, often gets a little spillover business. Film technicians usually come well prepared, says store owner Tyler Barnes. “But they often come to us for extension cord, wiring or flood lights,” he says.

Businesses are usually reluctant to reveal their profits from deals with movie makers. But the city surveyed some of the businesses that got location fees or new sales when “Last Action Hero,” the tongue-in-cheek picture starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, came to town two years ago.

The Long Beach Convention Center earned $150,000, The Dome pulled in about $15,000 and the Hyatt Regency, which served as both a setting and as temporary residence for production personnel, raked in $398,000, says Burns, the city’s film liaison.

*

There was also some free publicity for the city, she adds. “Danny DeVito actually says at one point, ‘I’m going to the Hyatt in Long Beach,’ ” she says. “And there were aerial shots of Long Beach in which the city is portrayed very beautifully.”

Eight years ago, Aaron Spelling Productions tried to film a modern Christmas special in downtown Long Beach, with the Three Wise Men traveling on camels through the streets and a helicopter, bearing a psychiatrist, flying in.

But in those days, the helicopter presented a big problem. Permitting it to land on city streets required special action by the City Council, whose members decided to demand that they be mentioned in the television special’s credits. By the time the council sorted it all out, the producers decided to shoot in Los Angeles.

Those kinds of problems are generally resolved swiftly now. A set of guidelines covering a host of filmmaking contingencies has been worked out by city officials, and permit applications are usually ruled on within three days.

The city also has contracted with John Robinson, a savvy location expert and longtime Long Beach resident, to serve as coordinator with movie makers.

“A lot of the job is just schmoozing,” Robinson says. “You have to know what movie people are looking for outside of just the location. Parking, what’s across the street from the set, what kinds of problems there might be with the community.”

*

Because the choice locations in Long Beach are mostly in commercial areas, the city has not encountered the kind of community backlash plaguing Pasadena and Beverly Hills, with their picturesque estates and mansions in resistant little neighborhoods.

“There’s no question that there’s always some inconvenience to filming on location,” says Kathleen Milnes of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. “Production companies are like mobile factories. It’s like taking General Motors and setting up in someone’s house or office building. There’s a lot of equipment, a lot of people.”

Like many aspects of the movie industry, bringing production crews to Long Beach sometimes is a matter of happenstance.

For example, the producers of “No Greater Love” were set to move on to San Diego County after shooting scenes on the Queen Mary. Their task was to construct a movable set in a pool, so actors and stuntmen could go into the water, depicting the Titanic’s final dramatic moments. They had set their sights on a pool in Escondido.

“But it was a grueling prospect, getting up at 4 in the morning to travel to San Diego County,” says producer Christopher Morgan.

Then Robinson showed the producers the Belmont Pool, a large indoor pool that could be appropriated for 10 days or so, and the producers elected to stay in Long Beach.

Three weeks ago, the south end of the pool was transformed into a scene from the North Atlantic, with a section of the Titanic’s deck, complete with a bit of orange smokestack, sitting in the water, and a piece of plastic foam iceberg floating nearby.

*

For the culminating scene, the set was jacked up at one end, as if it were about to slip beneath the waves. “It’s good for the extras,” said director Richard Heffron. “It gives them the feeling of being on a steep incline right next to the water.”

After four hours of preparations and rehearsals, the cameras were ready to shoot. About 40 actors and stuntmen, all in period costumes, clustered on the deck. A forklift at the side of the pool began rhythmically lifting and dropping a heavy pipe to create waves. Air pumps under the water began to churn out bubbles, and a prop man released a glycol-and-water aerosol into a fan, creating a dense white fog next to the water. Half a dozen lifeguards in shirts and ties treaded water next to the set.

Action! Suddenly, the actors were all sliding down the deck, holding on to each other, skidding down the incline, wriggling around the set. Stuntmen went flying into the water.

Cut! Heffron stood next to the camera, flashing the thumbs-up sign, and the production crew broke into spontaneous applause, whooping and whistling their appreciation for another piece of movie magic.