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Show Fvlovie Controversy Continues as Filming Goes On - I --!1'li'.'Tt! ;TTT H'l 'l' 1 I' i l-l-.'i J 1 i i nfii i 1 nil . inn i "iV- -4 - f ; f , - 7 x2ZjTcyt .-. ..... 7 i pvt '1 4. c t w - - - 4 rr"rUrt"H , f a j , : II - V, r" ri 1 - v i ; ? .--. f V 1 i kj"'"T"" ji'--r-i---c - !.- .. : ! ! . i 1. i .,,,, i. ?' 'J,, ji r ; ? I i-r-4 rrT LJLf v. ; -cv.' .: ...-..-.. ,';., ? d . . - - t 'fi:;: w by Anne L. Burnett Record Staff PfiiUETY " Wed., Aug. 19, 1981 Eileen Brennan atara In "Female "Fe-male Sheriff." tentative title of a CBS-TV film which haa gone Into In-to production In Park City, Utah. Michael Jaffe and Jud Taylor are producers, and Taylor la directing di-recting from a script by Jim Byrnes. The above article is the first of free publicity being generated for Park City because of the shooting of the film here. However, not everyone has been happy about the idea. It appears the vote is about 25 to 21 among Main Street merchants and workers over whether or not they like the idea of a film company shooting on Main Street. The vote tally comes from two petitions circulated a-mong a-mong local businesses. The first one printed in last week's Record complained about driveways and entry-ways entry-ways being blocked and a general disruption of business busi-ness without any compensation compensat-ion being given to the city. It further stated, "We also understand that neither the city nor the movie filming company plan to compensate local businesses for their loss of business. Therefore, we would like it to be known that we are totally against the use of Main Street for filming movies unless prior arrangements arrange-ments are cleared with all businesses affected." Twenty-one signatures accompanied ac-companied the petition printed print-ed August 20. This week a second petition appers in the Record's opinion section, it states, "We the undersigned Main Street Merchants would like to go on record as strongly supporting the filming currently cur-rently being done by CBS and Taft International in our community. We have experienced exper-ienced an increase in business busi-ness as a result of the filming and have enjoyed the excitement excite-ment created in the process. We will all benefit economically economi-cally in the future by the publicity being created at a national level by these productions. We do believe that the Main Street merchants mer-chants should be notified in advance el these filmings . and that should the street need to be blocked it should be restricted to earlv .morn-ing, .morn-ing, low traffic hours." Twenty-five signatures accompanied ac-companied the latest petition including a few from "the previous petition. What about the controversy? controver-sy? How did it get started in . the first place? City Manager Arlene Loble printed a public apology in the Record last week saying she "understood "under-stood through the Visitors and Convention Bureau, the Chamber of Commerce and the Downtown Merchant's Association that you (mer chants) were aware of tht fact that the film would be shot in Park City." She then apologized to merchants for any inconvenience or disruption disrup-tion it might have caused. "Ladv With A Badge"crew She explained to this reporter that she had "never been through a filming before and had no idea of the impacts." She noted, however, how-ever, tht not all expressions have been negative. "Many of the merchants are pleased with the idea. A lot of people attached to the film company are spending money in town so it has helped businesses but it's hard for those businesses who've been hurt to understand that it's too late to undo what's been done but we are going to take a serious look at what's happened and if it doesn't seem to be a benefit for the community, we'll have to consider ending it," said Loble. In fact, the city council, merchants and Loble plan to discuss the issue before this week's city council meeting on Thursday at 4 p.m. What do other communities do about filming requests? Apparently, Ap-parently, many of them are going out of their way to attract such business including includ-ing Utah. Methods vary from full-page "thank you - come again" ads in Daily Variety to personal visits to Hollywood. Holly-wood. Loble admits there appears to be some confusion and lack of communication somewhere some-where that has resulted in hurt feelings on both sides. "The reason we granted the filming request in the first place," said Loble, "was to bring more summer business to town... it's good for the film company but it needs to be a two-way street." Meanwhile, a number of members of the cast and crew had hurt feelings after reading last week's petition. They admitted to boycotting several stores and restaurants restau-rants who signed it. One crew member summed up his feelings by saying "...look, we're a top-knotch crew. We're not some cheapo outfit. We've been spending a lot of money especially in the local restaurants restau-rants but no more and I'll be damned if I'll come back to this town." Parkite Ron Burnett, a local employed by the film company com-pany as a stand-in and third assistant director, said "As an independent director, I empathize with the crew. It's very hardc to shoot a 2 or 3-hour movie in three weeks. They're working six days a week and up to 12 to 15 hours a day. It's long, hard work with a lot of egos involved, it's hard to explain to people that there are hundreds of details. But I'll tell you one thing, if word gets out among a crew like this that Park City is an unfriendly place to film, you'll never get anymore film business here. Besides, Park City should realize they only have a limited future as a location anyway. Once is used enough times, everyone will start to recognize it and it will have outlived its -originality." Burnett agreed with advance ad-vance notification and he said if city officials didn't know what questions to ask in order to estimate the impacts "maybe they should have come to some of us who do." How do movie company officials ' feel about their negative reception? Jaffe Taylor Production executive Erv Zavada said he can't speak for all of the crew but he said most of those working with the film company com-pany aren't upset with the community. "I think it's a shame that one or two merchants were aggravated and ran around but it came as rather a surprise to us," said Zavada. He explained that Park City was chosen as the film's location when the Utah Film Board brought them to the city as part of Iheir campaign to sell Utah to the film industry. He noted, "We met with city officials and did our usual checking into permits and licenses that might be required in order for us to shoot. We were told there were none." Zavada said this was done about three weeks prior to filming and he said, "we even had a cocktail party for community leaders and merchants the first night we were here, not too many of the merchants showed up but we made the fffort." Zavada said he thinks the film company's shooting on Main Street was simply the straw tfiat broke the camei s back. "People (were stopped twice trying to1 get to Main Street because of all the construction on Park Avenue and by the-time they got to us they were unhappy. I think the shooting was less disruptive than it appears," he said. Please turn to page 9A more movies i I : j I Writer, reporter, critic, Parkite, David rieisher in his latee role as an "extra" deputy. Continued from Page 8A Zavada also said the company com-pany found it disturbing that a city geared to attracting visitors by its nature like skiers would have a negative attitude, "They just threw us a curve ball, that's all," he said. He added "the city needs to address the issue of interrupting inter-rupting their normal routine for three or four weeks in a six-month period and see if the hullabaloo is really worth it. I'm sure that after the emotion dies down and merchants review their August Au-gust receipts they'll see we had a positive effect. We brought sixty-plus people to Main Street every day during our shooting there who took breaks, bought things, ate at the restaurants and bars at night and didn't cause any trouble." Zavada said he agreed with Burnett's view that Park City can only be used as a loction on a limited number of "shoots". And, he said "filmmakers are being encouraged en-couraged by the state of Utah to film here and Park City is a beautiful place to film." What are Zavada's suggestions suggest-ions for coping with the issue? "When the merchants and city officials sit down to talk about this thing, they should realize that the film business is a world-wide industry and it's not just confined to Hollywood or New York anymore. I also think they should take a look at what permits and licenses they might need to require to alleviate any misconceptions." misconcept-ions." Would Zavada come back to Park City to film? "Sure I'd come back as long as the city will have us. I think it's good for us and it's good for Park City, but I'd hate to see the city adopt a no filming policy . because of a few negative reactions. Everyone would suffer, in my opinion, because be-cause of those few." |