GELFAND’S WORLD--Pets were hiding under porches. People were fleeing the sounds of gunfire. A helicopter was hovering, blasting what sounded like automatic weapons fire. It went on for a very long time. And this was happening in San Pedro, California, a week ago Monday.
It turned out that this was just the most recent incident in which a film production company was allowed to operate without proper notification of the neighborhood. The urban residents living under the flight path of that helicopter were offered neither sufficient advance notification, nor any legal right to tell the film production to stay away. The Player is scheduled to be aired on NBC, and mere residents of the City of Los Angeles are powerless to place limits on the way that this program is made.
The sound effects that people heard are referred to as simulated gunfire. It's what the industry warns us about on the notification tags that we sometimes see posted on our doors. Apparently in this case, not everybody got the memo.
So last Monday afternoon, a film crew swooped in and opened fire above our rooftops. To the local residents, it could have been anything from a terrorist attack to an unusually violent police action.
There was also an issue involving rude, insulting behavior by members of the film crew, as one witness described to me. My informant described raising an inquiry with crew members, and in response being told off in no uncertain terms. The crew described how important they were to the local economy. This patronizing talk was delivered within view of the port that does close to a billion dollars a day in transshipments.
In the aftermath of the noisy assault on the community, the organization tasked with handing out filming permits, known as FilmLA, offered up its usual insincere apologies. But also as usual, FilmLA failed to admit that changes in the rules are needed, and that these involve modifications in its own structure as well as in the way that potentially damaging film shoots are managed. If you want to get an inkling of what is wrong, click on the FilmLA link and look at the makeup of its board of directors. They are industry people, with nary a neighborhood council representative in sight.
In talking to San Pedro residents in the aftermath of the quasi-invasion, I was struck by the fact that most people don't know how the film permitting system works. In particular, they are unaware of how rigged the system is in favor of the film companies, and how little say we have about whether a film crew's helicopter will be allowed to hover directly overhead for an hour.
In practice, the community lying underneath such an onslaught is powerless to say no. Members of the Los Angeles community have demanded for years that neighborhoods should have a chance to prevent egregious abuses. For example, no residential block should have to endure repeated filming events over the course of a single year, or to endure overly bright lights shining through their windows in the middle of the night, or to endure chronic noise.
Why have our politicians and our government caved so cravenly to the industry? One part is obvious -- fear of losing more of the film business to other states and foreign countries. I would hazard a guess that the other half of the explanation involves politicians caving to the political power that goes along with extreme wealth. After all, when political candidates want to raise money, they come to Los Angeles and mingle with the rich folks. And a lot of those rich folks are in exactly the industry we are talking about. The political clout held by the industry has been used without a lot of sensitivity to the wellbeing of the community as a whole.
Here is a story that goes back a few years. Actually, it was right after Janice Hahn was elected to the City Council. At the time, the city was discussing how it wanted to develop its future relations with the movie industry. It was the beginning of what ultimately was to become FilmLA, and the start of the negotiations that would develop into the current system.
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Early in that process, City Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski suggested that the neighborhood councils be allowed access to the discussions. Mind you, there was no suggestion that neighborhood councils would have any actual authority, just that they would get a chance to provide their comments to the industry and the government.
It's curious how that played out. The City Council committee that was in charge of this motion was chaired by Janice Hahn, and it scheduled a public meeting in the City Council chamber. The industry packed the room and objected to neighborhood councils even being allowed this minimal level of participation. Then other members of the City Council showed up and delivered long speeches, basically offering up vacuous cliches about how balance was needed. It's curious that the balance they spoke of was not actually any kind of balance at all. There was no mention of protecting the public, or of preserving residential neighborhoods, or of inviting neighborhood council input. Hahn got the message, and the Miscikowski motion quietly disappeared.
The industry got its way, which was that Los Angeles neighborhoods and their lawfully elected neighborhood council representatives were locked out of the discussion.
At the time, I thought that this was very shortsighted, because I was -- and continue to be -- in favor of a system in which a place like San Pedro could actually work to entice location filming to come into its area. Our merchants can use the business. The only difference would be that the region would be able to communicate with the industry as to reasonable limits to be put on filming permits. Everybody would benefit, if only the industry were willing to talk to the people it so arrogantly walks over in the current system.
For an example of one sort of potential negotiated agreement, I wonder why a film shoot really needs to use noise effects, including simulated gunfire, when it is possible to put in the sound effects in the postproduction lab. I suspect we will get a letter pointing out that it takes more work to put sound effects into a show at the postproduction level. I'm not terribly sensitive to that class of argument. My feeling is that any production that can afford to keep a helicopter overhead for an hour can also afford to dub the sound of gunfire onto the track using its own lab. How about doing that, rather than inflicting the noise upon my neighbors?
There is one thing I can say for FilmLA. It does have a public relations arm that responds to complaints and phone calls. One of the San Pedro residents I spoke to referred to getting return calls and an apology from FilmLA. I got two return calls, and these responses came over the holiday weekend. At this level, FilmLA is efficient.
The problem is what FilmLA tells you in that return call. Basically, we are told that FilmLA doesn't have a lot of power to change policy or to put limits on what a location production can do. When I suggested that simulated gunfire should be prohibited in the public space, it was conveyed to me that this is the kind of limit that FilmLA doesn't get into.
Curiously enough, San Pedro residents who complained to the local City Councilman's office got a similar runaround. That office refers you back to FilmLA. Likewise, the LAPD told the locals that they were aware of the filming, but that it had satisfied all the required applications and permitting. Apparently it's OK to disturb the peace in a big way as long as the production company has that piece of paper.
In short, we have a situation in which nobody accepts ultimate responsibility. Everybody points the finger in another direction. Worse yet, there doesn't seem to be much recourse available to any community which would like to prohibit egregious abuse of their space and ears, such as what happened last week in San Pedro.
What's sad about this whole mess is that communities such as San Pedro would love to encourage filming and the business that it brings to the local merchants. It's just that we need to be able to communicate what specific times and places have to be off limits. I find it hard to believe that the industry and local communities wouldn't be mutually benefitted, if only they would talk to each other. It's that practice of mutual discussion that the film industry so bluntly rejected back when Cindy Miscikowski suggested it. It's time to reconsider.
Let me suggest something. I would like to invite the director of FilmLA, the office of the mayor, the office of City Councilman Joe Buscaino, NBC (the company that will be using the helicopter footage) and CBS (the company that has used our neighborhood so many times) to meet with my neighborhood council Committee on Cultural Affairs in the near future. They all may be pleasantly surprised to discover that we are pretty good at developing mutually beneficial agreements.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 73
Pub: Sep 8, 2015
