Putting New York in Chatsworth : Faraway Places Have a Familiar Look as Crews Disguise L.A. Locations for Big, Small Screens

In the season finale of “Cagney & Lacey,” a two-part episode airing the first half of May, the police officers track mobsters to a hunting lodge in Upstate New York.

What looks like a hunting lodge, however, is really a home in Chatsworth’s Monteria Estates.

The San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys are filled with homes, hotels, streets and parks that masquerade as someplace else in front of the camera: a section of Ventura Boulevard turns into a Philadelphia suburb for the ABC series “thirtysomething”; a cluster of pine trees at Los Angeles Valley College makes the school a perfect replica for a Seattle high school campus in NBC’s “A Year in the Life”; the Warner Center Marriott becomes a hotel in Denver for ABC’s “Dynasty”; and in “Project X,” a feature starring Matthew Broderick, the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Center in the Sepulveda Dam Basin served as a military base.

“Almost every time you see people in their cars driving and talking, it’s filmed in the Valley,” says Jim Carberry, location manager for Mary Tyler Moore Enterprises (MTM).

Directors use Van Nuys, Ventura or Lankershim boulevards frequently for an urban look, he says. Those streets have the added advantage of being near nice residential neighborhoods and the studios.

Convenience is an especially important consideration with the intense production demands of a one-hour television show. It takes seven to eight days to shoot a show, half or more of which can be spent on location. With most shows having between six and 18 locations, shooting the scheduled four to five minutes of film a day isn’t always easy.

What do location managers look for?

“Everything for TV has to be larger than life,” says “Buck James” location manager Mike Casey. “You want it to pop out at you. If the script calls for a $60,000 home in the Midwest, we might use a million-dollar house in Hancock Park.”

Easy parking for the crew is an important consideration. Location scouts also look for houses and neighborhoods that have what they call that “anywhere USA” look--which doesn’t include palm trees. Nothing irritates location people more than palm trees.

“They’re everywhere and they always manage to show up in the shot,” one manager fumes. “Especially when you’ve found the perfect site.”

The trees are the most obvious tip-off that the show was really shot in Southern California, despite the crew’s painstaking efforts to create the illusion of another locale. Because they can’t cut down the palm trees, clever art directors sometimes disguise them with phony bark or climbing ivy with branches coming out of it.

Pesky palm trees and the difficulty of moving a 75- to 100-person crew to various locations might make it seem easier to shoot on a set. But audiences want variety and, notes one location scout, it is “cheaper to rent a restaurant for a day than build one.’

While some residents welcome movie crews into their homes and hearts, pocketing the thousands of dollars they receive for their inconvenience, their neighbors sometimes grow tired of the nuisance and the hassle.

For some people “it can be a real invasion to have a film crew on your block,” says Dirk Beving, director of city of Los Angeles’ motion picture coordination office. Beving is in charge of granting the city’s film permits and is the person who has to field many of the complaints.

“There are trucks arriving at 6:30 in the morning, catering crews, maybe 50 people milling around, lawns are walked on, generators droning all day. . . .”

In the late ‘70s film-weary homeowners on a quaint two-block section of Agnes Avenue in Studio City finally revolted and pressured the city to limit the number of days film crews can shoot in their neighborhood.

Other overused communities also have clamped down, restricting the hours when filming is permitted, charging higher permit fees and requiring agreement from surrounding neighbors.

Some producers claim it has become prohibitively expensive to shoot in Los Angeles and have moved their shows out of state or to Canada. Still, Los Angeles and the valleys are versatile and allow directors to achieve a variety of looks without leaving home. What follows is a list of the top 10 locations for filming movies and television shows in and around the San Fernando Valley:

Van Nuys Airport. Popular as a movie location since the 1920s, the airport is probably best known as the scene for one of the most famous movie sequences in history--the conclusion of “Casablanca.” Over the years, helicopters have crashed on its foamed runways and extras dressed as soldiers have acted out “invasions.”

“There are three or four productions going on almost every week, including commercials,” says airport spokesman Bob Hayes.

The now-defunct TV series “Airwolf” used a hangar there as the base for the fictional Santini Air. Parts of “Firefox,” “Project X,” “Raid on Entebbe,” “Wonder Woman,” “The Bionic Woman” and “Mission Impossible” were filmed there. The airport was also the perfect setting for “The Fall Guy,” whose plots often pivoted around smuggling, helicopters and planes.

“We were always looking for drug-runner airports,” says then-location manager Peter Tobyanson. “Clay Lacey (one of the airport’s tenants) has a lounge that you can use to duplicate any small town airport.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Van Nuys also can be dressed up to look like Denver’s Stapleton International Airport. When Alexis returns from a trip on “Dynasty,” the scene is very likely filmed at the Valley facility.

Residences. When a script calls for a house with that expensive look--swimming pool, expansive grounds, iron gates and a long driveway, location managers often turn to Monteria Estates, a private community in Chatsworth just south of the Simi Valley Freeway. Some of the rooms in the million-dollar-plus homes, which range from 5,000 to 20,000 square feet, are so large that a crew once built a boxing ring in someone’s den to emulate a rich man’s private passion.

Ray Mulokas, president of the homeowners association, says there is filming in the private community at least once a week. Recently filmed at Monteria Estates were the movies “The Big Picture” and “Caddyshack II,” and television shows “Jake and the Fat Man,” “Cagney & Lacey” and a pilot called “Micronauts.”

“And that’s just in the last month,” says Mulokas, reading from his association’s log. “Fresno,” the mini-series starring Carol Burnett, was done at Monteria Estates, as was Dolly Parton’s Christmas show.

The fee the homeowners association charges film companies each time they shoot in the gated community helps reluctant neighbors endure the inconveniences by filming. The money is used to maintain the community’s private road and a guard service, Mulokas says.

The “Cagney & Lacey” episode shot at Monteria Estates called for a rainstorm. Eight water towers, fans, a lightning machine and a couple of big generator units to run them was all it took, says Richard Klotz, the show’s location manager.

In Encino, many location managers find Cherna Gitnick’s big, beautiful house on the corner of Louise Avenue and Rancho Street ideal. It has a large driveway that provides off-street parking, and, best of all, no palm trees. Her house, she says, is rented out to TV and movie-of-the-week production companies half a dozen times a year.

The day before an episode of “L.A. Law” was scheduled to be filmed at her home, much of Gitnick’s furniture was removed to make way for furniture chosen by the show’s set designer. A few months ago, the “Hunter” crew leased the house for two days to shoot an episode.

“Sure it’s disruptive,” Gitnick says, “but it doesn’t last very long.” At first it was exciting, but the glamour long ago wore off. “It gets boring watching all the retakes,” she says.

Lake View Medical Center. “Probably 75% of the time you see a hospital on film it’s Lakeview” says free-lance location manager Tim Goldberg. He selected the Lake View Terrace facility as the place where Farah Fawcett’s character was hospitalized in the television movie “The Burning Bed,” and as a location for “Silence of the Heart,” a TV movie about teen suicide.

Lake View Medical Center closed in 1986, a victim of financial difficulties. Today the hospital is used exclusively for filming, about 50 times a year, says Mary Munson, location liaison for the medical center. The hospital charges film crews between $2,000 and $4,600 a day.

The original pilots for “Trapper John, M.D.” and “St. Elsewhere” were filmed there, as were episodes of “L.A. Law,” “Dallas,” “Hill Street Blues,” “Remington Steele,” “Julie Farr, M.D.,” “Falcon Crest,” “Cagney & Lacey” and “Knots Landing.”

The facility’s long, narrow corridors and rows of vacant offices also lend themselves to other kinds of productions, like the miniseries “V,” which was partially shot there. The front office has doubled for a police station, the kitchen became a morgue and a new series is using an upstairs hallway to mimic a girl’s dormitory.

Newhall Land & Farming. With 40,000 acres in relatively desolate Newhall emulating every type of earth surface from ponds and rivers to sand dunes, Newhall Land & Farming owns probably one of the most-filmed locations in the Los Angeles area. “Last year was an off one for us,” says Lou Rios, film coordinator for Newhall Land & Farming. “We only filmed 200 to 250 days. Some years we shoot as many as 300.”

The company has gotten more business from Hollywood as the city of Los Angeles has become more restrictive about explosions and stunt work.

“We do blow a lot of things up out here,” Rios says. Crews destroy a good number of cars at the facility--crashing them, dunking them in ponds or sending them over cliffs.

Two new Vietnam series, “China Beach” and “Vietnam War Stories,” have built standing sets on Newhall Land & Farming property.

“It’s tough to do the special effects and helicopter sequences for a show like ‘China Beach’ on a back lot in town,” Rios says.

It shouldn’t be surprising then, that “The A-Team” practically lived out at Newhall,” filming most of its stunts and driving sequences there, says then-location manager Ed Duffy.

The television shows “Knight Rider,” “Airwolf,” “McGiver” (which has now moved to Canada) and “Little House on the Prairie” all used the location extensively.

Newhall Land & Farming also provided the locale for the restaurant/bar explosion in Robin Williams’ “Good Morning Vietnam”--the only sequence not filmed in Thailand--as well as most of the African sequences in Steven Spielberg’s “The Color Purple.” A substantial amount of “Throw Mama From the Train” was filmed on Newhall Land & Farming’s own private train, two standing train station sets and 4 1/2 miles of discontinued track.

Sherman Oaks Galleria. Where else are the girls in the movie, “The Valley Girls” suppose to hang out but the Sherman Oaks Galleria? The Galleria also was a natural location for the mall sequences in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (both the movie and the TV show).

And who could forget the scene from “Commando,” in which Arnold Schwarzenegger escapes the bad guys by hooking a rope onto the cross beams in the mall’s atrium and swinging across the mall to an elevator?

The Galleria has been the scene of TV shows “thirtysomething,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Riptide” and “Dallas.”

Bob Brody, the Galleria’s assistant general manager, estimates that the mall is used half a dozen times a year as a location. Most of the filming takes place during the day when the mall is open, but occasionally, as in “Commando,” the crew has to film at night when everyone else has gone home.

Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Center. “Film people tend to like the look of our administration building,” says Jim Langley, plant manager of the reclamation center in the Sepulveda Basin. “They also use the entrance to the plant and the guard shack a lot. You see it all the time on TV. They cover our name and put their own in.”

Two or three times a month the telltale oversized white production trucks pull into the center’s gates to unload their equipment and considerable crew for yet another shoot. Last year, when the new “Star Trek” series rented the center’s Japanese Gardens to depict a perfect planet with perfect people, “they brought in a lot of beautiful blonde actresses in skimpy costumes,” Langley says. “I had a lot of trouble keeping my operators on the right side of the wall for that one.”

Tillman doubled as a military base for a few days in “Project X.” The plant’s influent pumping building was used for exterior shots of the movie’s secret government project. The crew had to fly in a couple of old planes from Van Nuys Airport, landing them on Woodley Avenue and taxiing them into the plant, Langley recalls. “We had to move our fences temporarily so they could get the planes in.” The film crew also built a guard hut and wooden barrier they could trash in the final chase sequence.

When crews pull out, they must remove all signs of their production, Langley says. So when the short-lived “Misfits of Science” crew built an add-on facade to one of the buildings that blended into the main building “better than any contractor could,” they blew it up for the camera, then dismantled the set.

Balboa Park. The Encino park is used for shooting 30 to 50 times a year, according to park officials. They receive requests to film everything from peaceful barbecue scenes to such violent stuff as the blowing up of cement trucks.

The versatility of the place is what pleases location scouts. “When I’m in the Valley and I need a park I usually use Balboa Park,” says location scout Goldberg. When location manager Mike Casey was working on the TV series, “Lottery,” he often used Balboa for “jogging-in-the-park or walking-along-under-the-trees-at-night or flying-model-airplanes scenes.”

Ventura Boulevard. Tobyanson, location manager for “thirtysomething,” says he frequently uses the Valley’s main drag to recreate Philadelphia.

“I’ve had a lot of luck on Ventura Boulevard with restaurants, camera stores, banks, malls, office buildings. A lot of our dialogue takes place in restaurants. And if we’re not eating, we’re shopping,” he says. Because they do so many quick cuts they need locations on top of each other. “The object,” he explains, “is not to move the trucks.”

Tobyanson says many location managers use Ventura Boulevard extensively for scenes of people driving and talking. “It’s close to most of the studios, it looks urban with the stores in the background and it’s got available light for night shooting.”

Kelly Snyder, location manager for “Slap Maxwell” and “Days and Nights of Molly Dodd,” has no problem finding “trendy, upscale New York-style restaurants” on Ventura Boulevard to recreate the city where his shows take place--restaurants “like you’d find on Melrose, but without the parking problems.”

Lankershim Boulevard. When a script calls for an “anywhere USA downtown look,” location scouts often use Lankershim Boulevard. It’s got a nondescript quality, they say, with the requisite coffee shops, office buildings, stores and at least one good alley.

The alley, near the intersection of Lankershim and Magnolia boulevards, has been the scene of many chases and captures, according to location manager Snyder. And last year, when he needed a back alley entrance to a small jazz club in New York’s Little Italy for a scene in “Molly Dodd,” he used the well-known alley.

“I needed something in brick or sandstone that looked like Little Italy. Normally, I would have gone downtown for that kind of look, but we needed to control it for the evening, so this was our best bet.” The set dressers made it look authentic by throwing trash around and painting removable graffiti on the walls.

Warner Center Mariott Hotel. This is one of the most-filmed hotels in the Valley. Segments from episodes of television shows “Dynasty,” “Year in the Life,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Hunter,” “J.J. Starbuck,” “Falcon Crest” and “Highway to Heaven,” among others, have been filmed there.

Location managers usually avoid using the same site more than once for a series, but hotels are the exception. “Because different people stay at the same hotel, you can use them over and over again,” says one location manager.

The Mariott can also be used as something other than a hotel. Ralph Alderman, location manager for “Hunter,” turned the hotel’s ballroom into a Las Vegas casino and hotel rooms into executive offices. For “J.J. Starbuck,” Alderman used the top of the hotel’s parking structure as a heliport.