SHOOT YURBIG MOVIE IN OUR GR8STATE PLEEEZ

When you’re a B-level city trying to make Hollywood’s A-list, you don’t say no to Sybil Danning, Michelle Phillips and the executive producer of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” You say yes to all of them, and “Right this way!” to Sherman Helmsley. James Woods? He gets the key to the whole darn city.

Like hundreds of cities across the United States and the world, Providence, R.I., desperately wants a cut of the movie-location millions, and the New England town is going to great lengths to lure Hollywood its way.

Movie, TV and commercial producers filming outside of Los Angeles sow cash wherever they go, pumping more than $500 million annually into some state economies. One feature film alone can unload more than $50,000 in daily local expenditures. With stakes that high and escalating, municipal governments have become as aggressive as cookie-wielding Girl Scout parents, using every tactic up to and including groveling to entice production companies.

For its part, Providence trotted out celebrities with any vague Rhode Island connection at a recent trade show party in L.A. to drum up movie business. In addition to serving up huge platters of the Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce and an endless stream of Del’s frozen lemonade (which crafty locals took to the bar for a vodka fortification), Providence greased the party with exploitation veteran Danning (“Naughty Nymphs,” “Reform School Girls”), former “Jeffersons” star Helmsley, Mamas and the Papas alumna Phillips, Woods and Vin Di Bona, the executive producer of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

“We want to network with people who work in the business,” says Providence’s effusively hospitality-oriented mayor, Vincent Cianci. “We’re hoping more productions will come our way.”

So far this year, Steven Spielberg’s slave drama “Amistad” is coming to town.

Some states and towns occasionally lock the doors when Hollywood comes calling: Alabama refused to cooperate with an upcoming George Wallace TV movie, and North Carolina didn’t welcome a serial-killer film. Generally, though, the regional film offices will bend over backward offering free office space and location scouting for virtually anyone with a camera and a light.

And unlike jaded Southern Californians, residents in Nebraska or Oregon or almost any other state don’t start foaming at the mouth the minute a movie truck rolls into the neighborhood.

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Competition between non-Hollywood locations has never been more intense.

To make sure it didn’t lose “The Crucible” to Nova Scotia, Massachusetts literally called in the National Guard. Mississippi’s Madison County and the city of Canton spent $800,000 for a 36,000-square-foot sound stage so “A Time to Kill” wouldn’t go to Georgia.

Las Vegas looked the other way when “Showgirls” rolled down the Strip. Actor-director Tim Reid and Virginia just broke ground on a 65-acre mini-studio.

The motor is money.

Of the $32 billion spent on production in 1996, the bulk (a trade estimate of $25 billion) remained in California, principally in and around Los Angeles. But New York says that its 1996 production revenues topped $2 billion, Florida claimed $600 million, and North Carolina received $430 million. Even states barely registering--Wisconsin, Delaware, Indiana--say producers spent millions in each.

“We’re not just building studios for rental,” Reid says. “We want to build a growing industry for the state of Virginia.”

Eager to stand out, cities and states offer tax breaks and rebates and hawk their homes with language usually reserved for movie posters: “Virginia: Any time. Any place.” “Colorado Springs: Shoot more. Spend less.” “Alaska: Anything else is just yellow snow.” North Carolina took a shot at Los Angeles, New York and Chicago saying, “When you yell ‘Cut,’ nobody knifes you.”

Even as the location marketers (typically called film commissioners) resort to old-fashioned sales techniques, technology is reshaping the way locations are both used and touted. With modern special effects, a movie needing a Chrysler Building backdrop can put its actors in Manhattan without leaving Culver City: You just add the skyline digitally, saving a bundle on travel and location costs. Location promoters, meanwhile, are using technology to promote their backyards. Some states have sophisticated Web sites, and a new company called Milk & Honey Films scouts locations in Canada and Prague in the Czech Republic by sending producers electronic images over the Internet.

Film commissions commonly operate much like big-money political fund-raisers: As long as the cash is pouring in, no one loses sleep over where it’s coming from.

“I’ve never turned away stuff--never. It’s not our purview,” says Robert Hirsch, director of Nevada’s motion picture division. “We never make a decision based on a script, and ‘Showgirls’ is a perfect example of that.”

Even though Savannah, Ga., wasn’t delighted with Aaron Spelling’s eponymous soap opera, a buck’s a buck and the show was not turned away.

“Film commissioners are not critics,” says Jay Self, Savannah’s film services director. “We’re not censors. If you break it down to the core mission of economic development, story and content aren’t really part of the deal.”

Most of the time, that’s the case. But not with “George Wallace.”

The place: Alabama. The time: the 1960s. The film location: a Pasadena high school, the Museum of Science and Industry, a Los Angeles mansion and the state Capitol in Sacramento. If everything had gone according to plan, the “George Wallace” production would not have spent a minute in California, shooting all three hours of the TNT movie in and around Montgomery, Ala. But just weeks before the production was to start, Alabama’s red carpet was hurriedly pulled from under director John Frankenheimer’s feet.

The trouble began when David Azbell, Wallace’s administrative assistant, got ahold of the “George Wallace” script, based on Marshall Frady’s biography.

“When I got about halfway through I turned back to the front cover to see if it had been written by Oliver Stone. It was one step away from putting Gov. Wallace on the grassy knoll in Dallas,” Azbell says. He relayed the script to current Gov. Fob James, who said its screenwriters were “damnable liar[s]. I wish the scoundrels who are producing this fanciful work of fiction would stay out of this state.”

“For them to take on this movie doesn’t make sense, because it’s ultimately about redemption, about a man trying to seek forgiveness,” says Mark Carliner, “George Wallace’s” executive producer. He said it would nevertheless be foolish to go where the production wasn’t wanted (especially since locations included James’ governor’s mansion), so the movie--and its money--returned to California.

“The governor of Alabama in my view personally picked the residents’ pockets to the tune of $1 million,” Carliner says. “But as John Frankenheimer pointed out, ‘Gone With the Wind’ was shot in Los Angeles, so we’re not compromising on authenticity.”

While rare, Alabama’s actions were not unprecedented. North Carolina was less than cordial to “Kiss the Girls,” which pairs Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman in a grisly serial-killer story. Duke University told Paramount Pictures that it couldn’t set up its lights on the Durham campus.

“The filmmakers didn’t get a lot of cooperation,” says William Arnold, director of North Carolina’s film commission. “But on the other hand, we had ‘Lolita’ here for six months and didn’t have any problem with that.”

In most cases, states and cities will do everything they can to keep a film from leaving.

“The Scarlet Letter” may have been a crummy movie, but Massachusetts hated losing the production to Nova Scotia. So when the makers of “The Crucible” subsequently narrowed their choices to Massachusetts and the Canadian province, Gov. William Weld summoned reinforcements, ordering the National Guard to supply the barges and manpower to move “The Crucible” production to uninhabited Hog Island.

“I was determined not to lose the film,” says Robin Dawson, director of the state’s film office. “And without a doubt, we would have lost it to Nova Scotia without the National Guard.”

Mississippi officials similarly feared that the makers of “A Time to Kill” would go elsewhere unless it built its huge sound stage.

Some film offices try to track pending productions as if they were talent agents, pitching Arkansas or Seattle the way an agent would flog Billy Zane or Drew Barrymore. Toronto, among the most popular out-of-Hollywood destinations, has a full-time Los Angeles office, and even Providence is considering opening one. Generally, though, film commissions are contacted by location scouts.

“By the time it shows up in Variety, it’s already a done deal,” says Peg Owens of the Idaho film office. “Unless you spend an awful lot of money, you can’t find out what’s in the works.”

Simply because a movie is set in a specific city or town doesn’t mean it will end up shooting there. Toronto is particularly popular because it can “double” for so many other places, and its film office has compiled an imposing 64-page list of the city’s cinematic deceptions, including “Due South” (Chicago), “Kissinger & Nixon: Peace at Hand” (Paris and Saigon), “Escape From Iran” (Tehran), “Losing Chase” (Martha’s Vineyard) “Amy Fisher: My Story” (Long Island) and “Executive Privilege” (Washington).

“I look at some of those movies and they scream Canada,” grumbles Pat Kaufman, New York state’s deputy film commissioner, who has lost dozens of productions (including, amazingly, “I’ll Take Manhattan”) to Canada.

Regions inextricably linked to specific genres may rise or sink as those genres soar or fail. Not too long ago, Arizona and New Mexico benefited from the western boom, with “Tombstone,” “Maverick” and “Wyatt Earp” pouring millions into local coffers. Unfortunately, all of the people who went to see “Wyatt Earp” could fit comfortably into the O.K. Corral, and as it fizzled so too did the western.

“We were on a real high when the big western came back,” says Linda Taylor Hutchinson, director of the New Mexico Film Office and president of the Assn. of Film Commissioners. “Obviously, we can’t be Pittsburgh. We can’t be New York. We’re obviously in the Southwest. But that does not limit us to cowboy movies.”

“We had to completely shift Hollywood’s way of thinking,” says Leigh von der Esch, executive director of the Utah Film Commission. “Ten years ago, people thought Utah was only for westerns.”

Conversely, some locations suffer from overexposure; the hottest locations these days are ones audiences have never seen.

Digital special effects will help enhance the setting for Paul Verhoeven’s futuristic “Starship Troopers,” but the beginning canvas had to be distinctive. Producer Alan Marshall visited 22 states before picking remote areas of Wyoming and South Dakota.

“It’s basically a question of looking for the most alien-looking place,” Marshall says. “We couldn’t shoot in Monument Valley. It was too familiar. We had to find locations that hadn’t been filmed before.”

In the end, though, if facilities and infrastructure are equal, location decisions usually come down to economics: the cheapest (meaning nonunion) labor and strongest dollar usually win. For those reasons, Canada and North Carolina get a huge share of productions.

With the U.S. dollar worth $1.36 in Canadian currency, producers can save a fortune by filming in Toronto, which recorded $517 million in 1996 feature and TV series and movie revenues.

“Back in the early ‘80s we were unexplored territory,” says David Plant, Toronto’s film commissioner. “With more than 1,500 productions under our belt, we don’t have to explain ourselves anymore.”

“We are in extreme competition with Canada and the dollar,” says Janet Zahn of the Minneapolis Office of Film, Video and Recording. “We can’t make up 30 cents on the dollar.”

No matter how attractive and affordable a location, special effects could jeopardize location filming altogether. The small Idaho town in “Dante’s Peak” didn’t even have a peak; it was added digitally. The climactic Chunnel scene in “Mission: Impossible” wasn’t filmed anywhere near the tunnel, thanks to special effects supplied by Industrial Light & Magic. Best known for fantasy tornadoes and make-believe spaceships, ILM’s effects also include digital backdrops that can put actors into locations they never stepped near.

“There have been dramatic changes in our ability to create locations and exotic backdrops,” says Jim Morris, president of ILM parent Lucas Digital. Computer graphics now make once one-dimensional matte paintings come alive with texture and shadow. While the technology lends itself to complicated action scenes, a low-budget filmmaker needing a Niagara Falls honeymoon vista can pull it off cheaply and effectively, without moving his characters from an L.A. sound stage.

“We’re at the point where we could do that,” Morris says. “I don’t know if we would want to, though. There’s a balancing between virtual sets and location photography.”

“For the last few years, we’ve been saying, ‘Are we all going to be replaced by blue screens and green screens or any color screen?’ ” Hutchinson says. “Are all film commissions going to be obsolete? Will all films be shot in Griffith Park?” She doesn’t think so, and her colleagues agree.

“A lot of film commissioners are concerned about the advent of digital backgrounds,” Idaho’s Owens says. “But no matter how sophisticated the technology gets, I don’t think there’s any substitute for working on location.”