I doubt that San Diego tourists will ever be able to buy that longtime staple of touristic offerings in Hollywood — a map of where local movie stars live. When I worked on the staff of the Reader, I once tried to compile one, but we finally abandoned the project; the celebrity pickings were too slim and the hassles of disclosing their residences too many.
But locals and visitors alike may soon have the next best thing: a map of where famous movies and other locations were shot here, created by the San Diego Film Commission. Speaking before the San Diego Professional Tour Guide Association yesterday, Film Commissioner Cathy Anderson (the Commission’s President and CEO) disclosed that her organization is working on the map project now. Although the details of how it will be distributed are still being worked out, Anderson wants the map both to show where various projects were filmed and recount some of the colorful stories associated with them.
Her talk made it sound as if there’s plenty of material. Filming of movies and TV shows, commericals, music videos, corporate training pieces, fashion photography, travel and educational shows and other miscellaneous projects takes place 365 days a year here, and Anderson makes a persuasive case that the local film commission deserves credit for attracting a lot of that activity. Before its founding in the late 1970s, filming accounted for less than $400,000 a year in San Diego. Then the TV series Harry-O arrived in search of fresh locations, and local businesses salivated at the promise of the cash in-flows that might result. But the producers ran into such bureaucratic bottlenecks they grew frustrated and returned to LA. The loss of that business eventually prompted then-mayor Pete Wilson and other business advocates to set up an agency charged with turning San Diego into a filmmaking haven.
Among the ensuing innovations was a radical streamlining of the permitting process. Anderson says today filmmakers and local government agencies sit down for an all-inclusive round-table discussion of what the artists want to do. All the necessary permits can be generated in little more than an hour, she asserts. The city also charges filmmakers no use fees, and even police services are provided at a discounted cost.
Such measures and other services (such as the film commission’s library of 30,000 potential shoot locations) have fueled a boom that in both 2005 and 2007 approached $100 million dollars. (The city’s annual contribution, in contrast, is less than $700,000.) Although the film related economic activity plunged in 2008 because of the recession and the increasing practice of other cities paying filmmakers to shoot within their confines, Anderson still sounds upbeat about all the projects in the works here. Among some of the more intriguing: an FX show called Terriers that Anderson describes as “sort of The Rockford Files meets Simon & Simon” set in an Ocean Beach that’s treated as if it were a separate city with its own police force. An upcoming movie (Paul) about two comic-book geeks required 500 extras to be hired a few weeks ago to recreate Comic Con. (The logistics of filming during the real thing were too overwhelming.)
Until the map of San Diego film highlights becomes available, here’s a suggestion for an interim treat. Check out the film commission’s page of local filming trivia to learn, among other things, which San Diego County park doubled as Mesopotamia in 3000 B.C. in the 2001 mummy movie The Scorpion King and what San Diego location was used to simulate radio station KPRI in the 1998 feature Almost Famous.
