A Blase Reaction to ‘the Body’

On the day that Jesse “the Body” Ventura, the pro wrestler turned governor of Minnesota, arrived in town to lure a bigger piece of Los Angeles’ most visible industry, the man who represents “official” Hollywood yawned. And joked.

“I’d like to wrestle him,” quipped Cody Cluff on Saturday, when asked his reaction to Ventura’s efforts to drum up more movie-making business for the Gopher State.

As head of the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., informally known as the Los Angeles film office, Cluff strives to keep location shooting and related work right here.

A pet project of Mayor Richard Riordan, the film office was formed four years ago by the city and the county to halt so-called runaway production. It has streamlined permit procedures, won some union concessions and taken other steps that helped boost the entertainment industry’s contribution to the local economy.

But that hasn’t kept others from going after the lucrative movie-making action, among them Ventura, who said Saturday that his responsibility to improve his state’s economy prompted his Hollywood “trade mission.”

“In this business, it’s out of sight, out of mind, and we want to be in their minds,” Ventura said of the moguls he is trying to woo over the next three days.

The governor, garbed in a fringed jacket and jeans, spoke briefly with reporters about his plans after participating in a beach-side awards ceremony for independent filmmakers.

Accompanied by members of the Minnesota Film Board, Ventura has scheduled meetings with Paramount film and television executives, lunch with Disney bigwigs and a private reception for “100 film industry leaders.”

He’ll also fit in several appearances on radio and TV and a couple more news conferences, and host a round-table discussion and briefing with the Minnesota Film Board. He’ll wind things up with an “Ice Pack” celebration “for 700 Minnesotans in the L.A. film industry” Monday night before heading back to St. Paul first thing Tuesday morning.

Ventura, a sometime movie actor and a former radio sports-talk host, acknowledged that his industry connections probably helped fill his schedule here.

The film office’s Cluff, however, said he is not terribly concerned about a possible body slam from the nation’s midsection.

“We work real hard to keep close relationships with our companies, and we don’t worry too much” about such efforts, Cluff said.

He acknowledged that Minnesota has “a nice low-cost production center” but said the state has a specific “look” that won’t work for a lot of scripts and it “doesn’t have a lot of crew depth,” meaning it lacks a big cadre of trained workers.

“The work they are going to get is script-driven and from people who like to live with the polar bears,” Cluff said.

According to the Minnesota Film Board, the 60 projects shot in the state in the last decade have brought $9 million in tax revenues and pumped $102 million into the local economy.

One of those films, “Fargo,” made by native Minnesotans Joel and Ethan Coen, won two Academy Awards for 1996. Among others shot on location there have been “A Simple Plan” and the upcoming release “Drop Dead Gorgeous.”

Yet Minnesota’s share of the filmmaking pie is actually quite modest. Industry leaders here say they are more concerned about the productions they lose to such states as North Carolina, which did $391 million in film and TV business in 1996 alone. Increasingly, however, the American locales are losing productions to other countries, especially Canada and Australia.

As a presenter at Saturday’s Independent Spirit Awards, Ventura shared the stage with almost two dozen celebrities, among them Alec Baldwin, Lynn Redgrave and iconoclastic filmmaker John Waters. But the 6-foot-4 250-pounder, whose costume as a pro wrestler included pink tights and a feather boa, had no trouble standing out amid such luminaries.

Ventura, 47, stunned the political world in November when, running under the banner of Ross Perot’s Reform Party, he won Minnesota’s governorship. He bested two more experienced, much better financed--and certainly more conventional--candidates. He has continued to draw national attention during his first months in office, including a “Doonesbury” comic strip segment inspired by his plan to halt state funding for Minnesota public television and radio.

Cluff said he is used to high-ranking officials swooping into Los Angeles in a quest for some of its movie-making action, even though most of them don’t sport a profile as high as Ventura’s.

“We’ve had the governor of Oklahoma, and the Canadians bring their people in all the time,” Cluff said. “It’s like a revolving door.”

“We’re used to it, and we know we have to be ever vigilant.”