Plaaya Beijin

It’s so easy to get lost in the labyrinthine alleys of old Beijing. The worn, low-slung brick houses and narrow streets all blend together after a while, with identical rusted bicycles propped against every wall.

One recent afternoon, in fact, a pair of passersby sauntered through a manicured courtyard, complete with the stately and archetypally Chinese red-and-green trim, and then blundered through a wrong door, bound for nowhere in particular.

“No, not that way!” Richard Sylbert shouted, as the pair disappeared out of earshot. “That’s a dead end!”

Others may lose their bearings, but Sylbert knows this corner of Beijing as if he designed it himself. Which is exactly what he did.

This version of the Chinese capital, conceived in Sylbert’s vivid imagination, took root roughly 6,200 miles from the real thing--on a scrubby, sun-scorched seven-acre field in Playa Vista, not far from LAX. There, Sylbert, a venerable production designer, supervised the building of a massive set for MGM’s $50-million legal thriller “Red Corner,” directed by Jon Avnet (“Up Close and Personal”) and starring China’s hunkiest scourge, Richard Gere.

Mr. Sylbert’s neighborhood is, in other words, a fake, a few more sprinkles from Hollywood’s inexhaustible stardust supply.

Yet as fakes go, the “Red Corner” set is mightily impressive. Motorists tooling down Lincoln Boulevard may glimpse the pagoda rooftops and wonder whether Chinatown secretly moved west. It’s even easier to suspend disbelief up close: Walking down the street as 200 extras buzz in Mandarin and Cantonese and yellowed Chinese newspapers litter doorways, a visitor has trouble remembering that the bricks are really plastic and the walls are in fact plywood and the moon, for all we know, is only paper.

His turn as an unreal-estate developer has left Sylbert feeling rightly proud: “After [we spent] $2.2 million, MGM was squealing like a pig,” he boasted.

The studio may have had good reason to squeal. Huge, made-to-order outdoor sets like “Red Corner’s” are largely a Hollywood relic, a throwback to the days when studios churned out epics with gargantuan sets that matched moguls’ aspirations.

Big as it is, Sylbert’s version of a Chinese hutong, or neighborhood of alleys, pales beside the 90-foot-high medieval castle built in Pasadena for Douglas Fairbanks’ “Robin Hood” in 1922, or the staggering, 55-acre Roman forum built in Spain for 1964’s “The Fall of the Roman Empire”--the latter considered the largest outdoor set ever built. For the UFO landing scene in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), Steven Spielberg commandeered a 10-million-cubic-foot dirigible hangar in Mobile, Ala.

In recent years, however, studios have often found it cheaper to shoot on location instead of building highly detailed, life-size sets. Technological advances have also made it possible to add convincing backdrops with a computer after shooting is finished.

“It’s getting a little cost-prohibitive” to construct enormous outdoor sets, acknowledged Catherine Adamick, production analyst for the California Film Commission, which helps filmmakers find suitable locations.

“For ‘Gandhi,’ they rented India,” Sylbert, a 69-year-old Brooklyn native, said wryly. “That ain’t hard.”

Sometimes, however, studios have little choice but to build. Knowing that residents probably wouldn’t enjoy dodging magma during their morning commute, the makers of “Volcano” built a facsimile of the mid-Wilshire District on former Lockheed property in El Segundo. And the makers of the upcoming “Pleasantville” have erected a fanciful version of a 1950s town in Malibu Creek State Park, with discussions underway to make the set permanent, according to Adamick.

The “Red Corner” set was similarly born of necessity. Gere plays an American businessman framed for murder and at the mercy of a capricious foreign judicial system. The filmmakers believed a request to shoot in Beijing would have been denied, though whether they officially asked depends on the source (MGM officials said they formally applied but did not receive word back; Avnet said they did not bother to go through the motions because it was assumed the answer would be no).

In any case, the decision probably had little to do with Gere’s fervent support of Tibetan independence, despite a somewhat romantic suggestion to that effect from the actor’s publicist. Chinese leaders generally shun Western filmmakers regardless of circumstances. Since 1991, only one U.S. feature--Warner Bros.’ “The Amazing Panda Adventure” (1995)--has received permission to film in mainland China, according to the California Film Commission. (This figure does not include Hong Kong, which until this week was under British rule.)

Substitute locations in Hong Kong proved unfeasible for logistical reasons, according to Sylbert and an MGM spokesman. (Avnet said a Hong Kong back lot under consideration needed too many alterations.) So it was Playa Vista or bust.

“If you can’t go [to a location], you either build it or make another movie,” said Sylbert, decked out safari-style in khaki shirt and slacks as he led a reporter on an hourlong tour. As an Oscar-winning production designer whose credits include more than 40 films, including “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Chinatown,” “Reds,” “Dick Tracy” and the current “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” he seemed more excited than daunted by the latest challenge.

“I’ve had problems like this [before],” he explained, “but not this exacting.”

Indeed, since starting last October Sylbert has been pursuing the project with an uncompromising eye for detail. The task seemed overwhelming: To evoke several square city blocks of imposing but time-worn urban housing, some of it 700 years old. On two visits to Beijing, each lasting three weeks, Sylbert took about 1,500 pictures. Natives thought he was just another tourist, but these were no vacation snapshots. Mundane facades, sidewalks, street signs--Sylbert needed reference photos of everything so that he could re-create the scenes back home.

“See this manhole cover?” he said, pointing to a steel disc with Chinese lettering buried in one of the faux streets. “You can’t find anything like that over here. I took a picture of the real thing and then when we came back here we cast one just like it.”

For many of the props, only genuine articles would do. So Sylbert and his crew filled 4 1/2 large wooden shipping containers--the kind used to haul goods on cargo ships--with $26,000 worth of authentic Asian junk, including garbage cans, empty bottles of Zhu Jiang beer and 300 rusty Wu Yang bicycles. The filmmakers also imported several Jeeps and Volkswagen taxis, complete with real Chinese license plates and peeling registration stickers. Sylbert said the cars will probably have to be destroyed, as it would cost too much to bring them up to California emission standards.

“We’ll just make a coffee table out of it,” Sylbert cracked as he brushed past one of the yellow taxis.

It took the filmmakers seven weeks to find a location with enough land to meet their needs. Meanwhile, Sylbert and his design team were refining their plans. In the end, nearly 200 workers spent more than two months building the set, with some construction continuing through the shoot. The modern Beijing skyline will be added later as a special effect, Sylbert said.

All of which is fine by Avnet, who accompanied Sylbert on one of the Beijing trips and sometimes has to remind himself he isn’t back there again: “This set worked out fantastically for the film,” he said.

“MGM wants to keep the set up for five years so it can pay for itself,” Sylbert said with a laugh. (The MGM spokesman said the studio is “exploring ways to recoup its investment on the set” but did not provide specifics.)

Whether or not it survives the wrap, there is an irony here: Sylbert’s grandiose set is destined to play at best only a small part in “Red Corner,” currently slated for release in November. The bulk of filming was done on a series of sound stages in Culver City. Viewers will see the West Coast version of Beijing just during a car chase and a few other scenes.

When asked how much screen time that would amount to, Sylbert replied without hesitation, “Fifteen minutes, tops.”

East Comes West: On Stage at the Bowl. F26