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| Introduction: Opening the Doors Cast and Crew Prelude Journal 2: ACT 1: Blacklisted! March 6 (Day 2) March 9 (Day 3) March 10-11 (Days 4-5) March 12-13 (Days 6-7) Journal 3: ACT 2: Welcome to Ferndale! March 20 (Day 9) March 21 (Day 10) March 22 (Day 11) March 23 (Day 12) Journal 4: March 26 (Day 13) March 27 (Day 14) March 28 (Day 15) March 29 (Day 16) March 30 (Day 17) Journal 5: April 2 (Day 18) April 3 (Day 19) April 4 (Day 20) April 5 (Day 21) April 6 (Day 22) Journal 6: April 8 (Day 23) April 9 (Day 24) April 10 (Day 25) April 11 (Day 26) April 12 (Day 27) Journal 7: April 16 (Day 28) April 17 (Day 29) April 18 (Day 30) April 19 (Day 31) April 20 (Day 32) April 23 (Day 33) April 24 (Day 34) April 25 (Day 35) April 26 (Day 36) Journal 8: April 30 (Day 37) May 1 (Day 38) May 2 (Day 39) May 3 (Day 40) May 4 (Day 41) May 7 (Day 42) May 8 (Day 43) Journal 9: May 10-11 (Days 44-45) May 14 (Day 46) May 15 (Day 47) May 16 (Day 48) May17 (Day 49) May 18 (Day 50) Journal 10: May 21 (Day 51) May 22 (Day 52) May 23 (Day 53) May 24 (Day 54) May 25 (Day 55) Journal 11: May 29 (Day 56) May 30 (Day 57) May 31 (Day 58) June 1 (Day 59) |
Journal 7 April 18 (Day 30) Nine different scene numbers are listed on today’s call-sheet, with the focus being on Sc. 123, which the company began filming yesterday, and completes (in between rain showers) today. We are approaching our wrap date here in Ferndale, having originally scheduled 25 shooting days in the Eel River Valley before our scheduled move to Ft. Bragg and Mendocino next week. The circus is about to vanish as the caravan packs up its trucks for the two-hour drive to Mendocino County. Of course, weather is playing havoc with our shoot this week.  In the meantime, I felt it appropriate to give some insight into how a film company chooses a location for their story, and how a location manager (veteran Rory Enke) lays the groundwork for a company to settle in one place for such a length of time (Enke admits that he has never been based in one locale this long in his twenty-plus years as a location manager). While several towns were visited by the filmmakers in their search for a locale with the right sensibilities for their screen story, director Darabont singled out Ferndale after having visited the tiny tourist spot a decade ago. “I remember driving up the coast and pulling off the freeway to check this little town out,” the director relates. “I fell in love with its look, and recall thinking that this would make a wonderful place in which to shoot a movie, if you had the material to suit it. When I read Mike's script, I immediately thought of this town. Ferndale has maintained its old-fashioned character, and has been kept pristine over the years.” When it came time to hire a location expert to begin negotiations with Ferndale, the producers turned to the veteran Enke, a Minnesota native who relocated to San Francisco area in the 1970s after college. He relates that he joined the production last fall, after Ferndale had already been chosen by director Darabont to double for his fictional town of Lawson. Enke, however, did not participate in the initial location scouts when the filmmakers set out to find a town that could portray Lawson in their story. That challenge fell to another industry veteran, Laurie Balton, who compiled files on several towns up California’s coast (and inland in the state’s majestic wine country). Enke, a friend of producer Behnke’s wife (a San Francisco native and former proplady there), first talked with his future boss last September. The following conversation with Enke (pronounced “enk”), detailing our choice of Ferndale and our preparations to film there, was conducted during our location shoot in Ferndale. When did you first get involved in “The Majestic”? Jim Behnke called me I’d say the end of September (2000). I had talked to Jim several times on the phone prior to that, but we had never met. His wife is a personal friend of mine. We talked, he told me what was up and sent me a script, a very non-committal thing in the beginning, just really seeing who I was. I read the script even though I really wasn’t looking for work since my father had just passed away in August. When I read this, I wanted to charge into this immediately, if they wanted me. Jim called and asked me to meet them in Humboldt County, so I spent a week there ahead of them on my own. I talked to Greg Melton (our production designer) just in advance of meeting Frank. I met Frank and spent a week with him, kind of wandering around from Ferndale to Mendocino County, and had a great time. You could tell you were with a group of tight friends, Michael Sloane, Greg Melton, some people who really loved each other, you could just tell that. Behnke came to me at the end of that week and asked if I could join them until June, and I said “yeah, I’d like to do it”. Did you come away with the impression that the filmmakers had in their minds a location where they wanted to shoot this film? From a prior scout, Greg, Frank, Michael Sloane all knew where the Bijou (what they called the script back then) was. We knew where the diner would be and we knew Frank loved the Ferndale Cemetery. It didn’t take long in the beginning of the week to know that Ferndale would be the place. What was not resolved was city hall, and we actually struggled with that, that was not resolved in Frank’s mind for the first couple of days we were in Ferndale. One night walking down the street to meet Frank and the whole group for dinner, Frank was by himself and he was all excited, he had come over that hurdle in his mind’s eye view of the set. We were standing in the bank parking lot and he said “picture this here and that there” and I really thought he had a great idea about where city hall could be built. I always try in the first weeks with a director to stay out of the production, just let them talk, let them dream, don’t shrug your shoulders about something outlandish like building city hall over a bank. You know they’re pushing your envelope on how you’re gonna work it out in your own head, and thank God they’re pushing that envelope. Jim Behnke next asked me to come up here (Ferndale) around Christmas and do a little work, then hit it really hard after the first of the year. I replied “how ‘bout we start now”. Was there any talk and had you visited any towns that had an existing movie theater? Frank had used a scout named Laurie Balton who lives in Venice Beach and is primarily a scout. I don’t think she manages anymore, but has in the past and is really good, a very good, thorough scout. I normally don’t like to follow another scout. I consider myself a scout primarily and really like to come in on the ground floor because then you're laying the foundation yourself. I say that with a big exception to Laurie who laid an impeccable foundation for these filmmakers. I followed her notes, her insight from the initial scouts which were top-notch, and I’m a stickler on that, I’m hard on my own scouts when we work together because you're the first toe, the first impression, in the door. I tell my people what to wear as a matter of letting them know that that’s the kind of people someone is letting in their house. Laurie and her list, she went all over the place -- Healdsburg, Sonoma, places like that. On her own, she went up into the Sierra Mountains, she did thorough research, a fair piece of work from what I could tell. What happened in Ferndale to Frank and Greg and me is that the story told itself. Once they told me that’s where the theater would go and you could see the marquee from the cemetery in your mind’s eye, it all fit, it didn't take a lot of explanation. I think Laurie knew that too, she’s a keen enough scout. Scouting is like that, you know when you’re smelling the right thing. When they settled on Ferndale, you started laying the groundwork last October. What else can you relate about the early experience? There’s so many details, I could write a book. I’ve done a few small towns before but never for this long a time -- 25 shooting days is a long time in any place. That was my primary concern, that and the fact that everybody in Ferndale had to play ball, you had to have a complete signoff by everyone in town, or you were no where. That was the point I drove home from the very first meeting. The first meeting was with the Mayor, the Chamber of Commerce, the primary players. The second meeting involved the people who owned the diner land, the owners of the cemetery, people from the bank. I asked the mayor to gather them all in a room, I could not proceed without the compliance of the whole community. If one of them said “this stinks” I need to tell Castle Rock now. That was part of my strategy, to get them in a room, get them to at least commit verbally and then constantly play that card as we went. If I had to go back to Castle Rock and Frank after New Years and tell them we don’t have the diner, I think it would have affected everything he was doing. If this was perceived as too much for Ferndale, I understood that, we would then step aside. Castle Rock did a really good thing by allowing us the time to make friends, then do business. You don’t always have that privilege. I wouldn’t have been able to make a deadline by coming in December and making these deals after New Years. There was a month of making friends, no talk of deals, no talk of money, purely the pitch “you’re gonna love this story, you’re gonna love this movie, look at the movies Frank has already done”, a month of that. What was Ferndale’s reaction to that first meeting, their reception? Did they have their haunches up because they had been through this before, or did they sit there in a friendly manner and listen to you? They had been through it before, and I think there were a couple of rough edges from “Outbreak” but all in all, I think, was a well-managed show and whatever impact it brought to the community, it did not destroy or create a hatred for our craft. I’m used to working in cities like San Francisco and New Orleans where you show up in the morning and they’ve made a bonfire out of your parking barricades. There was not that type of bitterness here, as it had been at least five years since “Outbreak”. The other thing really in our favor was that we wanted to do it in March-April, a very slow time of year in Ferndale. What better thing to do than make a movie. The one reaction that was the most tricky, and I rehearsed the dialogue over in my head, was with the bank, which was “we’re gonna cover your building and close you”. Also the cemetery, where I knew we would spend a lot of time. The result was two wonderful owners, Moe Cook from the bank and Larry at the cemetery, two really nice people. Moe Cook helped on so many many levels in getting through to the town of Ferndale that this was going to be good for the town. The location manager from “Outbreak” told me that going in, that she, Moe Cook, would be my strongest ally, and she was. Moe has the ability to look at the big picture as opposed to a lot of others, she saw the overall impact of doing a movie of this scale and its magnitude in Humboldt County, that being when the movie comes out there will be a return for them in Ferndale and the county. It wasn’t an adverse reaction. I next brought my assistant, Richard Marks, onboard, and when he joined me, that’s when it really spread into the community, the sums of money that would be offered for deals. It got real busy real quick. How did you wind up in Ft. Bragg and Mendocino? We didn’t have these locations (train station, lighthouse) in the Ferndale area. Frank knows Mendocino very well, I think he’s spent some time there, long before he ever looked at it directly as a movie set. This is a special place to him. When I first met and talked to him he knew all the restaurants very well. The Skunk Train was again scouted by Laurie, she showed them pictures and they had that in their mind the whole time. The lighthouse became this little jewel that Frank went on, he really wanted it. Laurie Balton told us in her memos that that place would be difficult because it was a delicate spot which showed me again how good she is. Others would not have picked up on things like the one-lane road that runs for a half-mile. That shows a good scout who tells you on the very first scout that the situation will be a real pain-in-the-butt, and she was right. On “The Green Mile” Frank had shot in some historical houses, so reference letters had been forwarded to the folks at the lighthouse so they could see that. When I came onboard, I talked specifics about what we wanted to do, and that was a tough negotiation. But the lighthouse really fit into his mind’s eye regarding the story. I dealt with Lisa Weg with the North Coast Interpretive Association and then the Coastal Conservancy, who manages a lot of the property. We also fell under the auspices of the Coastal Commission which is a state agency. We were on property with endangered species, a bird refuge with endangered species and other restrictions went on and went on and went on. The conservancy said we could use certain parts of the bluff, trample it then restore whatever you damage. The coastal commission got involved and they reacted by saying they couldn't sign off if restoration figured into the shoot. They are a tough agency to deal with and have a lot of power within a three-mile range on the California coast. If you want to put gravel down for a truck you can't do it unless you get their vote through a lengthy process. Had we not had the prep time for this, that commission would probably have stopped us cold. I’d dealt with the Coastal Commission before on “Bi-Centennial Man” and “Patch Adams” so I knew what they were about. If a director wants to shoot on that three mile stretch of California coast, your first call should be to the commission to start the process because it will take that much time to negotiate. How does this project’s challenges compare with other films you’ve done? That’s hard to say. This really wasn’t as difficult as I thought when stepping in because 1) I had a good staff, 2) I had good support from Castle Rock, Jim Behnke and Alison Harstedt, we really talked and counseled a lot like on a nightly basis, strategically they were very involved. That's what made it nice. In terms of difficulty, it can’t hold a candle to filming on an aircraft carrier like on “The Right Stuff”, one of the most difficult things I’ve done, which was terrifying on every level. This project didn’t have terror. It had fear, but not terror. It had all those things that get your adrenaline going, but we were not doing anything that I felt was extreme other than affecting these people’s lives for several days. It wasn't like we were burning something or doing stunts in the city, anything risky in that regard. The difference nowadays is you go to these places like Ferndale, and talk to the community. In Ferndale there is a community, dealing with the press, dealing with these community meetings actually meant talking to the parties involved. In that sense, that was nice. It may not have been the most difficult place to film, but it had its days. In your job, which you've been doing for a long time, you had to lay the ground work in Ferndale for 2-3 months. Do you ever have the fear that that could be unraveled when the filmmakers come into town? That’s a good question. I’m really one to say I can get you in there, I now have done this a few times, know what I’m good at and where I lack confidence, and I’ll tell you the truth even if it hurts, but that is part of the job. I’m often the bearer of bad news. In years of doing this, I’ve learned to tell the truth the moment you know it, that’s the health of the situation even though it’s killing you and you know it’s going to kill them. I’ve never been beaten up, disliked or hated by filmmakers for telling the truth, even though I know they dislike what I’m telling them. There were days where I know I told Frank this was not the best way to do something, but Frank was amazing in his ability to work out another choice, and he wouldn’t do that if you weren’t telling him what the circumstances were. K.C. Colwell, the same way regarding scheduling things. One thing I worry about is am I telling them everything they need to know. But I’m also one who believes, as I learned on “The Right Stuff”, that the more you sweat in peace the less you bleed in war, and I’m a real prep junkie. I really push my staff and myself during prep. I’m one who believes that good location managing is invisible if you’ve done the prep right, you’re then just there waiting for the things you cannot prep like that lawnmower, those church bells, but you’re ready for it, that’s what you're there to deal with, not to negotiate contracts, not there to reinvent the wheel. I usually say to my people I don’t negotiate in front of a lens. If you’ve got a problem with what we’ve discussed, you find me and we’ll finish it when the camera goes away, but that’s my time, and I won’t be held to ransom. In Ferndale most of the time that came true, they heard that or at least understood it with few exceptions. We did have to get on the table and wrestle a bit, but then I’m a different animal in that situation. I don't like negotiating with the camera out of the box. I’m not friendly when that happens! Tomorrow -- The Majestic comes alive! |
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