Jodom in the News

Bringing down the 'House'

        By David Brooks Andrews / Metro West News - November 23, 2003

As he drives by in his sleek, black Cadillac Seville, Mark Fitzgerald has his eye on your property.

No, he's not a real estate agent. And he's not a thief casing the joint, either. He's a freelance movie location scout looking for a spot to film the next Hollywood movie or television commercial.

For filmmakers, the appeal of the MetroWest and Milford areas is the "small New England towns, the architecture, the many colleges and the neighborhoods," Fitzgerald said. "People don't realize it because we live here, but a lot of small towns around the country don't look anything like this."

The 36-year-old Framingham resident's "locator radar" is always on. His head is full of images of places he's driven past. In his search for perfect locations, he put 145,000 miles on his previous Cadillac over a four-year period. "I'm a Caddie guy," said Fitzgerald. "You don't get so many tickets."

Fitzgerald's work begins when a production company hands him a film script and asks him to find a specific kind of location. He'll head out with his Nikon N70 in hand in search of 10 to 12 sites to photograph.

The company will give him definite parameters for what they want, but he doesn't always heed them. For instance, when he was hunting for a building to serve as the orphanage in "Cider House Rules," he was told it couldn't be brick. "I have it in my notebook," said Fitzgerald. "First thing I wrote, 'No brick.' They wanted it to be white clapboard." After three weeks of hunting, he came across the all-brick Ventfort Hall in Lenox. He shot it anyway. "They went from no brick to signing up," he said.

Scouting locations is Fitzgerald's favorite part of his job. The tough work comes when he has to coordinate the logistics of a shoot, figuring out where to park a "mile-and-a-half" of 18-wheelers and where to keep 100 extras readily available but out of the way.

He facilitates the permitting process, meeting with town managers, fire and police chiefs, and public works departments, arranging for them to paint out yellow lines in the roads or to take down street signs.

A film being shot in MetroWest or Milford may not necessarily be set there or even in Massachusetts. Fitzgerald found Tom Hanson's farm on Nixon Road in Framingham for David Mamet who shot scenes there one day last June for his film "Spartan," starring Val Kilmer. With a little paint and a few props, the production company turned Hanson's barn into a Pennsylvania feed and seed store.

"How do you know it's Pennsylvania?" asked Fitzgerald. "Because we tell you it's Pennsylvania."

He knows better than anyone there's a lot of luck involved in landing a film location. He had arranged for the film crew from John Travolta's 1998 "Civil Action" to shoot on the grounds of Framingham High School. The scene involved boys playing with firecrackers at the edge of a pond that was so toxic the water blew up when the firecrackers exploded over it.

As it happened, it was a very cold November when the film crew was in town. Three days before they were scheduled to shoot at the high school, a special effects man standing on a bridge threw a log onto the ice.

"It bounced 8 feet into the air," said Fitzgerald. "At that point it was all over for Framingham High. Pyrotechnics weren't going to work on a frozen pond."

The production company wasn't obligated to pay for the location they didn't actually use, but they gave the high school a check anyway for what Fitzgerald recalls was $5,000. "The way I took it," said Fitzgerald, "they didn't want to embarrass me in my hometown." He ended up with a photograph of his former high school administrator, Richard Kropp, and the director of "Civil Action," Steven Zaillian. "When I graduated, I'm sure the administrator didn't think in a million years I'd be showing up with John Travolta in my back pocket."

Before you sign

Depending on the size of the property and the size of the film, movie companies pay $500 to $5,000 to use a location, according to Robin Dawson, director and president of the Massachusetts Film Bureau in Boston. She added that it's likely to be at the lower end of that scale.

She suggested people talk to the film bureau and make sure the filmmaker they're dealing with is reputable. And, be prepared to have "people completely taking over your property," she added.

Hanson said it worked out fine for him to have David Mamet and his production company film "Spartan" on his farm, but he warned it can be very disruptive. There were more than 400 people on his property during filming.

"You have to be there and keep your eyes open," Hanson said. "They're in and they're out, and what's left behind is yours."

At Wellesley College in October 2002, the filming of "Mona Lisa Smile," starring Julia Roberts, brought about 100 crew members as well as the cast and extras, six tractor-trailer trucks, 14 recreation vehicles, four box trucks, four catering trucks and six vans to transport people, said Mary Ann Hill, the college's spokeswoman.

The trick to making it work smoothly, she said, was lots of advance meetings between representatives of the production company and campus grounds people, electrical staff and police.

"Given the enormity of the undertaking it went remarkably well," she said. "But having said that, there was no mistaking the giant impact." She referred to it as a "special opportunity," but added "we don't expect to be the location for a major motion picture any time in the near future, at all."

When independent filmmaker Mike Amato of Franklin takes his crew of eight to 10 into a home or business, he suggests the owners leave for the shoot unless they want to watch it so he doesn't have to "shush people" during filming. One family left him to shoot in their Mendon mansion for four days, while they went to their other mansion in Pennsylvania.

He makes a point of taking Polaroids of the locations when he and the crew first arrive. "We go through painstaking detail to make sure we leave it exactly as it was found," he said. If the crew breaks anything, they make sure to pay for it.

Amato said he's extremely appreciative of the people who make locations available to him, often at no cost. He'll often agree to include the sign of someone's business in the film.

"If these places didn't exist, independent filmmakers would not exist because we can't build sets. We don't have the resources to do it," he said.

Victor J. Melfa Jr., executive producer of the indie film "Freedom Park," praised the people who let his crew film on their properties this past month, including St. Mark's School in Southborough, Connery's Inn in downtown Framingham and the Westborough High School and Little League baseball teams.

"It's a great opportunity for them," said Melfa. "It's tremendous free advertising. So that's how we pay them."

Hollywood East

No one is more aware of the financial benefits of filmmaking than Dawson, the film bureau director, and her colleague Laura Yellen, the organization's assistant director and treasurer. They work to draw filmmaking projects to the commonwealth, both by emphasizing the state's visual appeal and by finding restaurants, hotels and car rental companies willing to offer reduced rates.

The privately financed film bureau was created a few months after the Legislature axed funding for the state-run Massachusetts Film Office in 2002. Dawson said the film office was a winning operation for the state. During the time she directed the office, from 1994 to 2002, Dawson said filmmaking grew 1,400 percent and brought an estimated $500 million to Massachusetts. For every dollar the office spent attracting feature films and television programs, $125 was generated for the state's businesses, Dawson said.

Yet, Dawson said, the Legislature couldn't be persuaded to keep funding the film office in the midst of the state's fiscal crisis.

Now, the Massachusetts Film Bureau, which consists of Dawson, Yellen and a part-time assistant, raises its money primarily through fund-raisers. With a $150,000 annual budget, the bureau was able to bring $112.8 million into the state last year. Dawson estimates half the films that were shot in Massachusetts last year would not have come here without the film bureau's encouragement.

Dawson pointed out that the MetroWest area is economically appealing to filmmakers because most of it is close enough to Boston that members of the International Alliance of Theater and Stage Employees, Local 481, who do everything from hair and wardrobe to operation of the cameras, don't have to be paid for commuting to the film or television sets. And members of Teamsters union Local 25, responsible for driving the vehicles for film crews, don't have to be put up overnight.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have had "a significant impact on filmmaking" in Massachusetts, said Dawson, both because people became "timid about content of films and what would be acceptable to viewers, and talent and directors didn't want to travel."

Dawson and Yellen continue have great expectations for filmmaking in state. A surprising number of the Hollywood decision-makers are originally from New England, said Yellen, and "have a place in their heart for Massachusetts."

The film bureau hopes to publish a calendar, like the film office did, to which people can submit photos of potential Massachusetts film locations. The calendar will be shared with Hollywood film executives.

In the near future, Dawson wants to choose a MetroWest site to be a "Location of the Month" on the film bureau's Web site, www.massfilmbureau.com.

"The aesthetic value of Massachusetts, I think, is unparalleled throughout the nation," said Dawson. "We have some of the best locations."

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