TV Filming Shakes Up Neighbors

“Sherman Oaks” has invaded Woodland Hills, and it isn’t pretty.

No sooner had the cable television show “Sherman Oaks” set up shop in two earthquake-damaged homes in Woodland Hills than the homeowners dug in for battle.

What followed was quintessential Valley: The neighbors complained about “strangers coming into the neighborhood,” and building inspectors banned any filming until the proper permit is issued. Producers of the show, which features an earthquake in every episode, aim to spoof suburban Valleyites, but this was a bit too much of the real thing.

Tim Gibbons, the producer, was tight-lipped when he answered a reporter’s knock. The company wasn’t talking, he said, and referred all calls to the publicist. The publicist didn’t see the humor either: “So, just what is their problem?” she asked, when told about the controversy.

Later the production firm issued a written statement saying it had “followed all appropriate procedures,” claiming to have “always been a good neighbor,” and maintaining it has tried to “minimize the impact on the neighborhood.”

Forest Hills Homeowners Assn. President James Gardner, a clinical psychologist, was also disinclined to irony. He isn’t familiar with the show, which is a risque send-up of soap operas like “Melrose Place,” but he takes pains to point out he has nothing against it, or the film industry in general.

He just thinks it’s a commercial enterprise in a residential neighborhood, and it shouldn’t be allowed. “The only acceptable thing is for them to be out of here,” he said.

Meanwhile, Judith Hirshberg, deputy for City Councilman Marvin Braude, sighs when asked if she knows about the controversy.

“Have I heard from them? Everyone has a fax, everyone has a phone. And you’re asking, have I heard from them? . . . I have a file that’s getting bigger by the minute,” she said, adding that she is looking into what the city might do.

The company, Vin Di Bona Productions, has rented two houses at the end of a winding residential street called Queen Victoria Road. The firm has applied for a permit to film there over five or six months, according to the L.A. Film Office of the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., the agency in charge of issuing film location permits for the city and Los Angeles County.

The homes are both riddled with cracks from the earthquake, and their former occupants have moved out. Vin Di Bona has set up a few desks, but otherwise there is no trace of filming yet. The L.A. Film Office is still trying to decide whether to issue Vin Di Bona a permit to allow filming on a month-to-month basis beginning in mid-February.

But because homeowners have complained, “we are working out special conditions the company must comply with,” said said Michael Bobenko, vice president of operations for the film office.

Those might include requiring the cast and crew to be bused into the site to prevent their parking on the street, he added.

Meanwhile, neighbors’ complaints prompted city building inspectors to pay a visit to the site earlier this week. The inspectors took note of the temporary office Vin Di Bona Productions has set up, concluded the crew was preparing for filming, and ordered them to stop, he said.

“A motion picture company has to be in a commercial zone. It can’t be in a residential zone. They can get permits to do what they’re doing, but they haven’t,” explained senior building inspector Daniel Connolly.

Connolly said he gave Vin Di Bona Productions and its landlords until next Friday to comply. By then, the film office may have issued its permit, Bobenko said. But neighbors aren’t likely to be soothed. “I would just as soon they stay out of our neighborhood,” said Aaron Raznick, who lives on the street.

Raznick is more judicious when asked what he thinks of the show. “I’d have to see it first,” he said.

Despite its name, producers have been shooting “Sherman Oaks” in Redondo Beach. The show premiered in July on Showtime. An R-rated sitcom in the spirit of “Soap,” it features a lead character who is a plastic surgeon, and the occasional bare breast.

Although several key people involved in making the show hail from the Valley, “Sherman Oaks” is more a generic farce about upscale suburbia than a detailed portrait of Valley communities.

Neighbor Raznick, for one, would prefer that the producers be more true to their source. “Why don’t they film it in Sherman Oaks?” he asked. “Maybe the neighbors there wouldn’t mind.”

Times staff writer Patricia Ward Biederman contributed to this story.