LA Homeowners Hosting Porn, Film Shoots To Get By Economic Slump
By Nadja Brandt and Daniel Taub
bloomberg.com
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Jayshree Gupta reclined on an English-style sofa in her Beverly Hills penthouse as crews buzzed around taping protective paper over the hardwood floors and wheeling in crates of camera gear.
She was hosting a television-commercial shoot. It meant allowing dozens of strangers and 400-pound klieg lights into her home for a full day, and it was worth every minute, Gupta said.
“I am doing it because I need money to maintain my lifestyle,” she said, perched near a portrait of herself painted by her friend Barbara Carrera, the Bond girl in 1983’s “Never Say Never Again.” “A lot of my money is either gone or tied up. Right now I am hurting.”
Gupta, a clothing and jewelry designer, is among an increasing number of recession-pinched Los Angeles homeowners turning to Hollywood for help, offering their houses as sets for feature films, commercials and even adult movies.
“We are getting a lot of calls,” said Joseph Darrell, whose Los Angeles-based Joe Darrell Location Service represents Gupta. “They say, ‘Can you help me to bring a production to my home, because I have trouble making my payments.’”
The daily fee paid for the sort of work done at Gupta’s 3,000-square-foot condo in the city’s signature 90210 ZIP code is usually $2,000 to $3,000, Darrell said. That would cover about half of her monthly household bills, including maid service.
DayGlo Yellow
“I am praying, praying, for more productions to come in,” Gupta said. “I thought it was a brilliant idea to help myself.”
She declined to say how much she was paid, and wouldn’t give her age. “Not in this town,” Gupta said with a chuckle.
At Los Angeles-based Plan A Locations, more than a dozen calls are coming in each week, up from about two a week a year ago, said owner Marylin Bitner.
“We’re getting all sorts of houses,” Bitner said. “From small homes where owners are hoping production money will save their house to very large mansions where owners hope to avoid having to dig into their savings or having to sell stocks.”
Cosmetic changes are often required. Crews installed a new gate outside the house of a Plan A Locations client who dubbed it the “pay-it-forward” gate, Bitner said. Another client “almost had a heart attack” when he saw his living room had been painted DayGlo yellow, she said.
“This kind of stuff happens very often,” she said. “But then there is the thrill to meet Hollywood celebrities. We’ve had Alec Baldwin, Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., among many others. They are always posing with our clients’ kids.”
No Taxes
Famous homes have starred in movies, including 1997’s “L.A. Confidential,” which showcases Richard Neutra’s 1929 Lovell House near the Griffith Observatory. Hollywood has also thrown unknown homes into the limelight, including one in Studio City used for exterior shots of the residence on the 1970s sitcom “The Brady Bunch.”
Another upside: Income from residential filming for fewer than 15 days a year isn’t subject to federal taxes, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
Owners of commercial properties also are more willing these days to rent their sites for shoots, said Pete Brosnan, a partner in Los Angeles-based scouting company Hollywood Locations.
His company is helping the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art advertise its Geffen Contemporary exhibit space, a former warehouse in downtown Los Angeles that has been closed temporarily to save money.
It wouldn’t be the location’s first star turn: parts of 2000’s “Gone in 60 Seconds,” starring Nicolas Cage, were filmed there.
More Parking
While office buildings once commanded $6,500 or more per day, owners settle for less now, said Darrell, whose company has scouted locations for NBC’s “The Medium” and the Sony Corp. film “Pineapple Express.”
Local film, TV and commercial filming outside of studio lots fell 8.1 percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as movie-making reached its lowest since at least 1993, FilmL.A. Inc., the nonprofit that coordinates permits, said this week. TV production climbed 14 percent.
Diana Lee, a manager at Los Angeles-based Jamison Services Inc., a closely held commercial-property owner, said she agreed to $1,000 a day for use of a building in Torrance that has been vacant for six months.
“Anything is better than nothing,” Darrell said he advises clients, including Lee. “I often tell them, ‘Look, it’s not big-budget, but it’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.’”
Property owners tend to be more accommodating, said Carin Bowman, owner of Malibu-based Access Locations Inc. “They may make more parking spots available or care less about what production teams do.”
In My Tub?
Jerry Mendoza says he’s willing to go to an extreme he wouldn’t have before the real estate slump. It hit Southern California hard, with the median home price in a six-county region falling a record 34 percent in November to $285,000, according to research company MDA DataQuick.
His four-bedroom house in suburban Burbank, which Mendoza built in 2006, didn’t sell for the $1.3 million he asked, and when renters left in November he began leasing it for filming. The most he received for a day was $1,300, he said. So he posted an Internet notice that the property, which has an eight-person hot tub, was available to the adult-film industry, which he had heard pays as much as $5,000 a day.
A few months ago, “I probably would’ve said, ‘You want to do what in here?’” he said. “That’s reserved for me and the missus.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Nadja Brandt in Los Angeles at nbrandt@bloomberg.net; Daniel Taub in Los Angeles at dtaub@bloomberg.net. |
