Hey, Sean, Did You Enjoy Being Roomies or Was It All Just an Act?

Dear Sean:

Sure, I confess. It was a kick in the pants to be your sort-of roommate. So we shared an apartment for only eight days, including the time it took your crew to move you in and out. That still counts, doesn’t it?

The news that you wanted to move in came in a call from my landlord, Pat Cramer. “How’d you like to be in the movies?” his voice boomed over the phone. OK, it wasn’t really me who was going to Writer Joseph Hanania’s Santa Monica apartment was used as a set for the upcoming film “I Am Sam,” starring Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer.

be in your newest movie, “I Am Sam,” directed by Jessie Nelson; it was my apartment. Why split hairs? My apartment’s “unusual” qualifications for the role, according to the film’s location manager, Russ Sega: My bedroom window overlooks the window of neighbor Carl Wied above a garden walkway. Both apartments also look out on the street.

The idea was that you would move into my apartment, Dianne Wiest into Carl’s. Playing a mentally challenged man seeking to retain custody of his little girl, you would enviously stare through my window at Dianne’s warm home life. Along the way, you would so frustrate your high-powered lawyer, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, that she would storm your apartment and kick in your/my front door.

And so, barely 24 hours after my landlord’s call, about 20 crew members--the film is an Avery Pix production for New Line Cinema--were standing on a traffic island, all seemingly looking straight up at my windows. And then, they all arrived to inspect my apartment, whispering about that kicked-in door. I guess I wasn’t supposed to find out because otherwise I might freak.

And then they were gone, leaving an apartment which suddenly felt empty. Had it--had I--landed you as my roommate? Or had my contact high with Hollywood already produced my first letdown? I needn’t have worried. This, I learned, had been my apartment’s second audition.

During the first, my landlord and the location manager had knocked on my door while my maid was cleaning and explained their mission. She had let them in but, believing that any talk of your wanting to move in must be another Hollywood fantasy, she had never even told me about the visit.

And so it came about that your crew decided that yes, indeed, my apartment would be perfect for you. The question, then, was how much to charge for you to move in. There is no standard rate for renting out a home, says Morrie Goldman, spokesman for the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., which coordinates on-location filming throughout Los Angeles. Mostly, it’s catch as catch can, with the rate partially determined by a location’s uniqueness, its frequency of use and the film’s budget.

In Santa Monica, where permit requirements are generally tighter, a film company must also get written permission from the manager or owner of any affected residence, which mostly means those whose street parking spaces are blocked by those ubiquitous movie trucks, says city permit coordinator Vee Gomez. So my landlord, as well as the owners of nearby buildings, were undoubtedly negotiating sweet deals for themselves. But I was still none the wiser about how much to ask for.

Although you were scheduled to move into my apartment for only two days, those two days would not be consecutive; rather, they would be separated by a three-week stretch. To cut down on preparation time, the film company’s assistant location manager proposed that I allow my home to remain, for those weeks, as your apartment. In short, my Tiffany-style lamps would give way to your character’s Woolworth-style lamps, my pearl white walls to your dark gray ones and so forth. Thus, his pitch went, I would get to “live in Sean Penn’s apartment.”

Still, before you could move in, I went through intense negotiations for your planned stay, negotiations concluded less than 24 hours before the first set designers were due to arrive on Feb. 21, transforming my bedroom into yours. My fee: $7,000, plus what became a five-day expenses-paid vacation for two, first at Shutters on the Beach, later at the Fairmont Miramar.

*

It was a very sweet deal, but as the days went on, something gnawed at me. I missed having breakfast at my own table. I missed being able to walk two blocks over to my local tennis courts, without first having a valet get my car. Most of all, though, I missed the regularity of my work.

And so, I began sneaking home to interview people from my phone in the study, even as crew members popped their heads in, clearly wondering who I was. Despite the chaos in my apartment, however, some changes your film crew made were clearly for the better. For example, my apartment building is called The Wonder Palms, that wonder consisting of two scraggly courtyard palms. By the time you had moved in though, my building was surrounded by planter boxes full of palms. Opening my study window, I could, for the first time, actually touch a palm leaf.

What’s more, my landlord was moved to replace the rotting wooden trellis above the garden-walkway, which your film crew painted a glorious white. Now my building boasts the Wonder Palms Sean Penn Memorial trellis.

By the day of the shoot, then, the Wonder Palms had completed its Cinderella-like transformation, from a slightly rundown building to a miniature Garden of Eden, its courtyard palm trees laden, “Survivor”-like, with cameras and ladders, lights and filters. My living room furniture, on the other hand, was in storage, replaced by three directors’ chairs, all facing the front door Michelle would kick in.

But we hadn’t met yet, and when I told members of your crew that I hoped to get a picture with you in front of our shared apartment, they just shook their heads. In rather colorful language, they forewarned me that you have, to put it mildly, a negative reaction to cameras. Rather strange, I thought, for someone whose job largely consists of making moving pictures.

Still, wanting to start our relationship on the right note, I put away my camera and stood with the film crew on the second floor walkway, watching you act. In the scene, you dropped off an amazingly well-behaved baby girl at Dianne’s apartment, started walking away, then bent over to wave a final goodbye through a nearly closed window shade. Your performance, Sean, was affecting, that of a simple man in pain, fighting for what’s his.

True, Carl/Dianne’s front door would not stay closed after you dropped off the girl, and the director repeatedly called out to you not to worry about it--a trifle overly solicitous, I thought. But hey, snafus happen; all eyes were on you; and other than the crew’s apparent edginess around you, I saw no evidence of your “bad boy” rep.

So, after the scene had been shot, I walked over and introduced myself. I was, I said, the man whose apartment you were renting. I was also writing up the experience of renting my place to the movies for this paper. Instantly, your face contorted with rage. A reporter with this paper, you shouted, had told “lies” about you. Only if I got him fired would you consider talking to me. Then you stomped off.

A couple of days later, the movers had hauled my furniture back in, the crew had given me keys for my newly changed locks, the painters had repainted your gray bedroom to its original white; I was, once again, at home. Nor would we have to repeat the whole shtick weeks later. Apparently, you had gotten enough shots inside the apartment that first day.

So, when you came back Wednesday to shoot a final scene--this one in which you sit at a fake “bus stop” in front of the apartment--your film crew merely replaced my white blinds with your gray ones, making it seem as if the apartment were still yours. But it wasn’t, Sean, not really.

This time, you stayed in your trailer down the street. Then, smoking a cigarette, you arrived at the “bus stop” and prepared for your scene. Looking at me from 12 feet away, you didn’t even nod hello. A few minutes later, your crew chased me off. My watching, they said, was “disturbing” you. And so, as unexpectedly as you had moved into my life without a hello, a goodbye or even a thank-you, you moved out. But if you ever want to drop by, you know where I live.