Ronan Gray. The Peninsula Beacon, Thursday April 17, 2008:Steve Mallory sits with his wife Teresa on a sofa inside the doorway of his store in Ocean Beach and watches as six attractive young women emerge from the back of a long black limousine on Newport Avenue. Each one of them is tall, beautiful and decidedly not dressed for modesty. They amble across the sidewalk towards the business next door, laughing raucously and chattering excitedly until a booming voice calls “Cut”. A mass of people descend upon the scene and begin rolling cameras back into position, adjusting lights, and checking the microphones on the six actresses from the TV show, Mythological X.
Similar scenes have unfolded all over Ocean Beach during the past two weeks as a Twentieth Century Fox crew recorded the pilot episode for the new CBS show. Mythological X was created and written by Diane Ruggiero, one of the writers and producers of the Veronica Mars show, which was also filmed in San Diego. Sound Mixer, Trevor Black says that the story revolves around a young woman living in OB. A fortuneteller tells her that she will either marry her prefect match within a year or never at all. The twist to the tale is that she has already met and broken up with the right man. The episodes will revolve around her quest to discover which one of her ex’s is Mr. Right.
Black and roughly ninety percent of the crew working in OB on this Friday night are San Diego locals and veterans of Stu Segall Productions. The TV shows Silk Stockings, Renegade, 18-Wheels of Justice and Veronica Mars were all produced in San Diego at the production company’s studio on Ruffin Road in Kearney Mesa. The prospect of having a TV show based in OB is good news for Black and the one hundred-plus crew members working on Newport Avenue this Friday evening. Steve Mallory on the other hand is not so sure.
Outside Mallory’s furniture store on Newport Avenue, SDPD traffic officers are standing in the intersection, directing traffic around the film crew as they prepare for the next take. “All the money ends up in permits that go directly to the city” he says. On a typical Friday he says that he would expect to do a couple of thousand dollars in business. Tonight though, the production company is paying him to stay open and to rent the large parking lot attached to his building. He says that they have bought some furniture from him for props in the past too so, he admits, it’s not such a bad thing to have the production in town.
Rob Dunson is Deputy Commissioner of the San Diego Film Commission, a city, county and port funded entity that works to attract film productions here. He says that after the Veronica Mars show ended, there was little work left for the crewmembers here in town and most of them had to look north to LA for work. Dunson is exasperated when I mention the permitting issue. “San Diego does not charge for film permits”, he says. The only time that there may be a fee is if the film activities will incur a fee, such as when Cal Trans has to shut down a freeway. Then the production will pay the cost incurred by whatever agency is involved says Dunson.
Businesses along Newport Avenue seem to be operating as normal on this evening despite the fact that many of the parking spaces on the block have been taped off. If the pilot is successful and the show goes into full production, many of the locations will be recreated at the studios, minimizing the impact on OB. There will still be times when a scene requires the beach or pier for instance, and some local businesses were used as sets during the pilot. Dunson says that the producers kept the original names of those businesses in the show and that it should prove to be quite a promotion them if the show becomes a hit. The spectacle of a film crew at work has certainly brought plenty of foot traffic to the area on this evening. The sidewalks are lined with onlookers, straining to see if they can recognize any of the cast members.
One of the most recognizable faces on the set this evening is a former OB resident: Director Tim Bushfield (Thirty-Something, Field of Dreams, Stripes, Revenge of the Nerds) lived on Narraganset Street while he was in the US Navy. Narraganset is actually still in OB despite the UT’s recent assertion that it is in PB (see Behind the Scenes Star, Business Section Sunday April 20 2008). Sitting behind a row of monitors just outside the Mallory’s furniture store Bushfield calls for the next take to begin and the set falls silent again. Only time will tell what the overall effect on businesses in the area will be if the show goes into full production but as the black limousine pulls back up to the curb, music blares from the Irish pub just a couple of doors down, cars pass by and people walk down sidewalk and it seems that the businesses along Newport are doing just fine. Steve Mallory watches the cast go through the scene again and is content to sit and watch the spectacle, for this evening anyway.
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