Industry News :: Motion-picture perfect

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Dana Bartholomew, Staff writer
LA Daily News

VAN NUYS - Sid Bishop had lain on his deathbed, struggling through a respirator to convince a Hollywood location scout to use his Langdon Avenue home for a TV shoot.

"I want to be part of the action - on this street," the 78-year-old attorney told the Warner Bros. location scout who knocked at his door last summer. "The film is the action.

"I wish you could film here."

Last week, the now-departed attorney got his wish. And his barn-red house, filmed for the CBS crime drama "Close to Home," saw the latest action on what has become the San Fernando Valley's most oft-filmed street, with up to four shoots each month.

Its wide yards, towering trees and post-War clapboard homes make the neighborhood as homey as suburban Indianapolis or elegant as Ivy League Princeton.

With no Spanish-style stucco or palm trees to act as L.A. giveaways, this leafy enclave between Victory Boulevard and Vanowen Street could represent, well, just about anywhere.

"It has a great look that can be Anywhere, U.S.A.," said Michael Paolillo, a location manager for Warner TV Productions' "Close to Home." "It looks Midwestern, but'll certainly stand in for New Jersey or Connecticut."

And most of the residents have extended a hearty welcome despite the traffic, bustle and noise that often accompanies film and commercial shoots.

"This is Hollywood, it's a transformation, it's the Land of Fakery," Sid's widow, 79-year-old Betty Lou Bishop, said before the shoot, her halls and carpets cloaked in cardboard, her bedroom furnishings piled into a back room. "Everybody loves to be a celebrity.

"We should keep the (entertainment) industry in Southern California. The only way we can do that is to welcome them and help them."

On the day of the midweek production, the red-and-white Bishop home is reinvented in Indianapolis: The backyard a day-care center with plastic playground equipment, a new picket fence and fake fall foliage; the master bedroom the messy digs of college student.

The quiet street whirls with a hundred directors, actors, stage moms, grips, prop men, caterers and other entertainment industry workers ferried from nearby Woodley Park. And all the lights-cameras-action desired by the late Sid Bishop.

"You've got to go 'round and 'round the slide for about two hours," orders a smiling Spielberg look-alike to some of the many kids hired for the day-care shot. "Close to Home" star Jennifer Finnigan, playing Anabeth Chase, anxiously runs through her lines.

Up Langdon Avenue, Mildred Madden had gotten up at 5 a.m. to ready her backyard for the catering bonanza demanded by hungry film sets. She was grateful for the intrusion.

"We love it," said Madden, who had rented her yard to caterers for $250 while she fashions clothespin and dried-apple dolls. "And to be able to make a little money at that age, it's a pleasure."

The upside to Hollywood is money. And fame.

Langdon homeowners, their homes and -acre lots the cream of the architectural casting call, get both. An exterior shot can earn $500 to $1,000, location managers and residents say. Interior shots can fetch up to five times that much.

Hank and Gail Vanderhorst , whose white clapboard home has made more than 100 TV and movie appearances, credit God for their extra bounty.

"We love it; we think it's great," said Hank Vanderhorst, 68, a devout Baptist who refuses to allow nudity on his home sets. "We put four kids through college with the fees we get.

"We feel it's a God thing - we put our faith in Him and tithe."

The Vanderhorst home - a white rambler with black shutters and a Ferrari-red door - was the first on the block to star on TV in a Homelite weedeater commercial on "Wide World of Sports."

To make up for the disruption, the couple baked cakes and pies for their neighbors.

On his big-screen TV, Vanderhorst calls up some made-at-home hits. An Auto Club commercial. A CBS "Close to Home" episode in which a soccer mom/prostitute commits suicide on his living-room floor.

After an Edge shaving gel commercial, he shot hoops in his driveway with NBA greats David Robinson and Tim Duncan.

"We'd go all over the country and see our house on TV," said the former machine shop owner. "We were in a Marie Callender's and saw our house on a big screen and wanted to shout, 'That's our house!'"

Other neighbors got into the act.

While Orion Avenue south of Victory Boulevard had once been the Valley Hollywood draw, Langdon has surpassed it with roughly 30 shoots a year. This year to date, the area known as Midvale Estates racked up 40 film days, totaling 30 separate commercials, features and TV productions, according to the Los Angeles film office.

Commercials were shot for McDonald's, Toyota, MasterCard and Sears/Craftsman tools. Film and TV productions include scenes for the History Channel, Disney, New Wave Entertainment and the upcoming Universal feature, "Accepted."

Langdon neighbors say they don't permit pornographic film shoots.

"This is one of the neighborhoods where you have a bigge r percentage of people amenable to film production," said Steve MacDonald, president of the Los Angeles Entertainment Industry Development Corp., which issues film permits. "They're very supportive."

Some, but not all.

Film production can bring an industrial buzz to quiet streets. Traffic is sometimes restricted, parking limited, driveways blocked, garbage pickup hampered. Strangers mill about. Commotion fills the street. And generators can hum late into the night.

Joe Montoya, president of the Midvale Estates Neighborhood Association, which gets paid $200 for each film shoot, said that numerous production companies have broken promises concerning trespassing, noise and helicopters off front lawns.

"The novelty wore off a long time ago," said Montoya, an administrative law judge. "If I had my way it would probably never happen - it's not a residential use."

He said one neighbor reported coming home to find debris blown into her yard by a giant wind machine. When she objected, she was told, "You gotta take a chill pill."

Another neighbor came home last summer to find 30 to 40 production workers setting a scene on her lawn. When she objected, she was told, "I thought you were out of town; I thought it was OK."

Because of such abuses, Mark Bashaar, a unit manager for Warner Bros. TV Productions, said his company works hard to live by the rules.

"It's become so hard to film in L.A.," he said during the Langdon Avenue shoot. "It's really important that we maintain good relations with the neighbors, set rules and live by them.

"Because we want to come back."

Betty Lou Bishop, mother of eight living children, emerges from a temporary bedroom. "Dare we open this curtain," she said, looking out upon the set and a swing set she'd got out of the deal.

She wishes her husband, who had seen "Big Lots" and the grand-lam TV movie "61" shot at their Vermont farmhouse-style home, was there. He would have enjoyed it, she said.

"When I'm holed up in the back bedroom, waiting for them to finish, I wonder if it's worth it. But it is worth it. It's not just the money. It's the life - it's the moviemaking business."

Dana Bartholomew, (818) 713-3730 dana.bartholomew@dailynews.com

MAKE YOUR PROPERTY A STAR

For a primer on how to rent your property for film or commercial shoots, or to complain about filming problems in your neighborhood, contact the Los Angeles Entertainment Industry Development Corp. at (323) 957-1000; www.eidc.com.

To list properties for location shoots, contact the California Film Commission at (323) 860-2960; www.film.ca.gov.