Movie Locations

Reality has set in throughout Los Angeles. Camera crews tracking the unscripted lives of car buffs, geeky guys longing to date supermodels, wannabe singers and aspiring tycoons are filling streets and neighborhoods, turning the area into the reality TV capital of the world.

Actress Nicole Kidman was among eight people injured on a movie shoot in downtown Los Angeles early Thursday when a car struck a light pole, police said. The Jaguar, which was being towed by a camera truck, spun out of control about 1 a.m. as it took a corner in the 300 block of West 6th Street and its rear left side slammed into a light pole, LAPD Lt. Paul Vernon said. "Eight people complained of injury, including Nicole Kidman, and went to the hospital and were later released," Vernon said.

John Armstrong Location manager Current job: CBS' FBI thriller, "Numb3rs" Job description: "We have two teams. My team does the odd episodes and my associate's team does the even episodes. On each team we have one location manager, one assistant location manager and a utility player who goes back and forth. "The location manager has two functions -- to scout for locations and to manage the locations once they are found.

When a Hollywood production team began scouting locations for a film about poker star Phil Hellmuth, one of the first stops they made was to the land of Cheeseheads. Hellmuth, a 10-time world poker champion known equally for his success at the card tables as for his mouthy arrogance, is a Madison native. He attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison for three years and then dropped out to play poker full time.

The sign inside the airport terminal here proclaims a dusty mesa a few miles away to be "Hollywood's Newest Home," a reference to a plot of land where four vanilla-colored soundstages recently sprouted. There, in the shadow of the snow-capped Sandia Mountains, the aircraft-hangar-like buildings at Albuquerque Studios house part of a budding film industry that one local newspaper dubbed Tamalewood.

Ken Wales, a producer of the film "Amazing Grace," passed by Idaho, Washington state and the Kingdom of Jordan before stopping at Iceland. He was at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, looking for a place to film a World War II movie called "Sea of Glory," when a giant poster of Clint Eastwood on the black-sand Icelandic beach where "Flags of Our Fathers" was shot caught his attention.

THE sun was setting in Happy Valley. Neighbors chatted with Paul Pedevilla, who was showing off a photo of his puppy. Two boys played with popguns. A toddler, father in tow, wailed as he wandered about the cul-de-sac. A few feet away, an army of actors, directors, grips and gaffers prepared to shoot a shouting match between two mothers over their teenagers' romance. There were lights, camera, action -- and nobody in the huddle around Pedevilla, a TV location scout, batted an eye.

It was supposed to be a win-win, with Guam gaining a toehold in the film industry and two Hollywood moviemakers getting the island government's backing for their new kung fu franchise. "Max Havoc: Curse of the Dragon" was the first of at least two action flicks that producer John F.S. Laing and director Albert Pyun planned to shoot on Guam as part of an unusual deal with the U.S. territory's economic development agency.

When moviemakers wanted to film "Peyton Place" in this small seaside town, the bestselling novel the movie was to be based on was so scandalous that the local library didn't even keep it on its shelves. The book had sparked outrage with its titillating look behind closed doors in a proper New England town. People read it in secret, and it was banned from many schools But that didn't keep Camden from welcoming 20th Century Fox to turn its streets, homes and people into "Peyton Place."

Germany has barred the makers of a movie about a plot to kill Adolf Hitler from filming at German military sites because its star, Tom Cruise, is a Scientologist, the Defense Ministry said on Monday. Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology, which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject. The U.S. actor has been cast as Col.