When Your House Takes a Lead Role in a Movie

One day last fall, a crew of strangers invaded Bob and Linda Dove’s Virginia kitchen and began covering up the cheery Laura Ashley wallpaper, hanging family photos of people they’d never seen, and scattering about a few crucifixes and Madonnas.

And those were the least of the adjustments the couple would have to live with for six weekswhen they agreed to let their beloved home of 25 years be turned into a movie set.

The experience, said Linda Dove, was weird. But also rewarding.

The couple--she’s a state lobbyist for advertising agencies and he’s the U.S. Senate parliamentarian--came away with $15,000 worth of permanent home improvements, including a new gazebo, back porch, exterior molding, shutters, landscaping and enough stories to regale their friends for months. They also got a 10-day, all-expenses-paid stay at Washington, D.C.’s venerable Cosmos Club and a check for the use of the house--though neither they nor the film company will say for how much.

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That was the upside. The downside was having to live through far more disruption, dislocation and inconvenience than they had imagined, not to mention the burden of having to keep their very homey digs immaculate day after day for two months.

The Doves’ excellent adventure began in September, when a letter arrived from a location scout asking to visit their home as a possible set for “Cupid and Cate,” a Hallmark Hall of Fame made-for-TV movie scheduled to air in May. “We thought, ‘What a lark,’ ” Linda said. “A neighbor told us they’d already been staring in the windows while we were out of town, and he wrote down their license number.”

After checking the company’s bona fides with the Virginia Film Office, the couple agreed to a meeting. Ten people showed up at their front door--including the director and producer--and for two hours, said Dove, they “poked in every nook and cranny, every cluttered closet, every cabinet, every drawer, down in our musty cellar, all four bedrooms and three baths. It was very embarrassing.”

The 1910 frame house was among four locations used as sets for Hallmark’s movie, based on the 1998 novel “Cupid and Diana” by Christina Bartolomeo. The story revolves around an angst-ridden single woman, her difficult Italian-American family and frustrating search for Mr. Right.

Hallmark checked out nearly 30 houses in the area before choosing Chez Dove. The film execs liked the house’s high ceilings, large rooms that opened into each other and the expansive yard. But they said they would have to make a few changes. Outside, they would need to build a backyard gazebo, add exterior shutters all around the house and turn a rear deck into a covered porch.

Inside, the first floor--particularly the kitchen--would have to be drabbed down, and all the couple’s family photos, art and mementos removed. Location manager Louis Defelice assured the couple that most of the shooting would take place in the backyard and on the first floor.

“The character who lived here was a widower who’d been alone for four years, and they tried to capture a somewhat-neglected look. Our house certainly looks like a family has lived here over a long period of time,” Linda said. “They used all our furniture except a dining room table, which was too small. They changed all the art and made the house look darker and dowdier.”

A contract detailing insurance and liability was signed all around, and changes to the house were agreed to orally. Work on the exterior of the house was to start Oct. 8, and cameras would roll a month later. The film folks said they would use the house itself for a week and the Doves could live there until shooting began, then move out for 10 days.

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The couple also reluctantly agreed the house could become the backup set should bad weather preclude shooting at the other locations. That meant the place had to be kept shipshape and the Doves had to be poised to move out on a few hours’ notice.

On Oct. 15, an 18-wheel truck came and five people began packing up everything but the furniture.

“I’m sure they probably told me this, but the enormity of it did not sink in until they started walking in with boxes and boxes. They took down all the photographs, every dish in every china closet, anything that was sort of our personality,” Linda said. She took two vacation days to supervise the packing, and pitched a fit when her large refrigerator was taken away in a small truck by men who said it probably would not work for a week after its return because they had to lay it on its rear coil.

Worse yet, the appliance’s temporary replacement--a nonfunctioning vintage model--was stocked with prop food over one weekend. By Monday, it reeked. A frazzled Linda Dove demanded a working refrigerator, and within hours she had one.

“They took away the spoiled food. And we began the nightly death watch for the weather forecast because if it rained somewhere, we would have to evacuate to a hotel so they could come in and start shooting.”

Outside, the construction crew was arriving at dawn and working till dark, five days a week. “We went from ‘This is hardly going to interfere with our life’ to ‘Oh, my goodness, here they are and they are with us,’ ” Dove said.

The simple rear deck became a fully finished porch identical to one in front. A graceful gazebo was constructed in the backyard. Thirty-eight custom-made shutters were installed around the house and painted dark green. Copious shrubbery (which would stay) and rented trees (which would not) were positioned about the yard.

Things didn’t always go as planned. “They blew fuses every day with their power tools. We’d come home from work and the refrigerator would be off. After a week, we asked them to bring in their own generator. One day, they needed water to mix cement and they hooked up a hose to a faucet we had told them was broken and it flooded the cellar.”

As luck would have it, the autumn weather remained mild and dry, and the Doves did not have to decamp to the Cosmos Club until Nov. 5--three days before shooting. Linda Dove couldn’t resist visiting the set that first day of filming, “but it was so troubling I never went back. There were people everywhere, equipment everywhere, in the intimate parts of my house.”

Shooting ended Nov. 13, and the Doves returned. Three days later, so did the construction crew, to rebuild to code some nonconforming porch railings, touch up some interior and exterior paint, and peel off the boring kitchen wallpaper, which had been put up with something Dove called “movie glue” that allowed easy removal. The beloved Laura Ashley print was unharmed.

For the most part, Dove was thrilled with the home improvements. “We live in an old home built in 1910, and I’ve had workmen through my house a lot. But these people were the best I’ve ever worked with. They had just finished building a $1 million replica of Monticello” for a CBS miniseries.

By Nov. 17, set dressers--armed with photographs documenting the contents of every cabinet, drawer and closet--arrived to unpack the Doves’ possessions and put things back where they belonged. Dove took off two more days from work to supervise.

On Dec. 3, the last chore--fixing the damaged refrigerator--was completed just before a commercial cleaning crew removed the last traces of production dirt.

“It was bittersweet, like these are our good friends, but I’m really glad I’ll never see them again. It’s hard to explain the work ethic of a movie and production crew because it’s so high-energy. You know if you called them at 6 a.m. or 11 p.m., no matter what the problem, they’d fix it.”

Would she do it again? “Probably,” she said. “It’s like raising children.”

But next time, she said, she would pack up much more of her personal possessions. “I was not prepared for how thoroughly they took over our house,” where nearly a third of the film was shot.

On the other hand, when “Cupid and Cate” airs in May, the Doves will invite friends over for a viewing party on their new porch and in that swell gazebo.