The Valley Wire - 4/18/2008 Column

Hollywood on Location
By Mary Beth Gentle

It used to be that kids dreamed of running away to join the Circus; the big tent, the lights and the lure of a life filled with excitement. Well, I think in our day and age, the Circus has been replaced by ‘Hollywood on Location’. There is nothing more exciting then when the ‘circus’ that is Hollywood comes to town. It’s good for revenue, it’s good for morale and it’s guaranteed to capture the hearts and imagination of anyone harboring a secret dream of working in the movie business.

Hollywood goes on location for one big reason, there is no sound stage or studio back-lot that can create the look and feel of the real thing. If their story takes place in Chicago, then they need to shoot in Chicago. They need the audience watching their movie to feel like they are actually there. The town in the script is not only a backdrop for the story being told, it helps set the scene and define the characters. John Hughes’ movies and characters would not have been the same if they had been shot anywhere else.

When the camera and equipment trucks roll into town they bring with them the allure and excitement that is Hollywood, but they also bring entire crews of people that put their day to day lives on hold to do a job. They say goodbye to their families for weeks or months at a time. They hire pet and house sitters, they find friends who are willing to collect their mail and overnight it to them once a week and they pack as much of their lives in to bags and boxes to set up ‘home’ wherever they end up.

Production crews dream of being on the movie that shoots on some tropical, sun-splashed beach, but more often than not, they end up in small towns like Vernal, Utah. These crews curse their luck and quickly go on the internet to see exactly what they are facing. What they read frightens them to their core, a city of maybe eight thousand people that is famous for a large pink dinosaur welcoming them to town. This is enough to frighten these crew members into contemplating another career, but they quickly remind themselves that they have bills and a mortgage to pay and it is only six weeks or so of their lives.

Of course, what they discover when they arrive, is a town filled with genuine, nice people in a city that is surrounded by the beauty of the Flaming Gorge National Park. For one such crew member, assistant editor, Christopher Marino, working on the movie Chill Factor in Vernal, Utah, that was exactly the experience he had. Of all the locations he has worked in, that one holds some of the fondest memories for him. Not because of the time spent seeing the sights, but for the people.

To this day, he speaks of their kindness and generosity. “I still haven’t gotten over how, at Halloween, when my wife came for a visit, we couldn’t find a pumpkin anywhere. (Vernal loves it’s holidays!) When I asked a local waitress where we could find a pumpkin, she told me that she had an extra and would have her sister bring it to the restaurant. My wife and I were just happy to have even the smallest reject-pumpkin at this point. At the end of the meal, in comes a woman carrying a twenty-pound pumpkin! My wife and I reminisce about that Halloween every year.”

Most of the people on a movie crew come to town with the Production. But, they always wait and hire the most essential crew member when they arrive on location, the Production Assistant (“PA”). This is usually someone young, eager and happy to race around town running errands and getting lunch. What the crews gets, is a person who knows the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of the area. What the entertainment industry gets, is another convert. The cubicles and production offices in Hollywood are filled with people who started their careers working as a PA on the movie that shot in their hometown.