Film Locations

Even as Hollywood producers and film crews lament "runaway production," film commissions from across the world are scheduled to gather this weekend in an attempt to lure more away. More than 300 domestic and foreign film location and production services are expected to be represented at the three-day Locations 2000 Global Expo scheduled to begin Friday at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

California's Kern River Canyon was once a backdrop in the movie "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World." And, more recently, the 1995 movie "Twister" touched down in tiny Lebec, Calif. Facts and sites both obscure and famous star in a new movie map of California, now playing on the Internet site of the California Division of Tourism (http://gocalif.ca.gov). As of last week, the map listed sites for about 240 movies and television shows made in the last 50 years.

Wisconsin came fishing Sunday for its native sons and daughters who have gone Hollywood, hoping to entice them back to make movies and TV programs showing the green pastures, great lakes and old brick cities of their birth state. Gov. Tommy G. Thompson hosted a barbecue of bratwurst--the sugary pork sausage that has become one of his state's hallmarks--on the tennis court of the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in North Hollywood, and opened it to all comers. "This is wonderful," exulted Thompson.

For the past few weeks, a massive water tank plopped in the middle of the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood has been the site of intense secrecy. Security guards patrol the perimeter of the menacing structure, which has been hidden from public view by giant blue sheeting and towering scaffolding. The secrecy is no different at a warehouse lot miles away in the City of Commerce, where a huge replica of a rusting supertanker deck has been erected for a movie being shot.

Two of the entertainment industry's most powerful players, MCA president Sidney Sheinberg and superagent Michael Ovitz, led a high-level contingent to Hawaii last week to inspect personally what is looming as the most costly movie in Hollywood history.

For decades, the film industry has immortalized the coast and skylines of Los Angeles County, but the cities, canyons and beaches of Orange County have seldom seen the spotlight. Now, enticed by big production budgets, Orange County wants to be a player too. With officials on hand from the California Film Commission and the private sector, Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez introduced plans Wednesday for the county's new Film Office during a Newport Beach press conference.

Maybe you can't just walk onto a studio lot and settle down to watch the filming, but a piece of Hollywood is still available to civilians who don't mind a bit of a drive: the Paramount Ranch, in the Santa Monica Mountains above Agoura, a Western movie set that dates to the 1920s and is still active. From the Ventura Freeway, take the Kanan Road exit south, then turn left on Cornell Road. Follow it until you see the gate on the right for Paramount Ranch, which is open all week, 8 a.m.

If you watch the television show, "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," you know that the frontier doctor practices medicine in a rustic rock cabin on the dirt streets of early Colorado Springs. But those dusty streets are really at the Paramount Ranch, a re-created Western town near Agoura Hills in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. Oh, and about the doctor's rock cabin: Those aren't really rocks either. They're made of fiberglass.

Vietnam, late 1960s. A pretty blonde American has just arrived at the Saigon Airport to investigate her husband's death amid the turmoil and misery of that war-torn country. A frenzied crowd shuffles her out of the terminal and into a bustling street, where noisy Army jeeps and men and women on bicycles stream past. She looks confused. A cabdriver rushes to her side and escorts her to a waiting cab. They drive away. Suddenly, a voice shouts "Cut!"