Friday, April 17, 1998 | 10:43 a.m.
Car-stuck or star-struck?
The two-week closing of westbound Interstate 215 from Pecos Road to Windmill Lane to accommodate the filming of the action flick "Lethal Weapon 4" has left drivers such as Jo Valasquez feeling more like the former than the latter.
Velasquez, a Green Valley Ranch resident and local psychologist, has found that a 15-minute delay in her commute can mean missing a chunk of time with her patients.
But for local actresses such as Serena Steinfeld, 26, who served as one of 50 local extras driving her purple Saturn along the roadway, the filming provides her two weeks of employment, valuable networking, and firsthand experience working on a movie set.
"Anytime it comes into town, we're all really grateful," said Steinfeld, an actress who has been used as an extra in five movies filmed in Las Vegas.
As filming on the Beltway wraps on Saturday, Las Vegans are left wondering whether hosting the 200-person film crew -- even if it did include Mel Gibson and his baby blues -- was really worth the hassle.
Location manager Mike Haro said the crew was aware of the disarray caused by their presence. "The crew does understand we are inconveniencing people," he said, "and so we try to do it as fast and quickly as we can."
But in a locale already sensitive to the growth of traffic snarls, some see the Faustian bargain as taking advantage of the city's generosity and naivete.
"Las Vegas is just bending over," griped KXNT-AM afternoon talk show host Dominick Brascia, whose callers debated the closure early last week.
"In any other city, they would close it around traffic, try to accommodate us," he fumed. "They could have shot on weekends, during non-peak hours. It would have taken a couple more weeks and cost a little more money -- but no. They found a sucker city that was going to do whatever they wanted, 'cause we're star-struck. I bet people in L.A. are laughing at us -- that we got them to shut our freeway for two weeks during prime time."
But Robin Holabird, deputy director of the Nevada Motion Picture Division, denies that Las Vegas has been compromised.
"We have not given the movie company anything, by some standards," she said. "Would we blow up the bridges? No. Would we close off all the lanes of Interstate 15 between Las Vegas and the state line? No.
"We are not unaware of the difficulties it can cause people -- some of our own staff drives that road every day," she said. "But this is half a freeway, a highway that had not a long history of use, and a highway that had several alternate routes. Yes, there can be a level of inconvenience when you want to turn onto your road, and oops, it's closed this morning. But the whole community is going to benefit in many ways.
"Look upon it as what happens when they close the road to fix a pothole," she advised. "When it's done, things are a little bit better than they were before. You won't be able to see it, but this community will be better off."
One of those ways, of course, will be economically.
Indeed, in its relentless pursuit to keep Hollywood money trickling east, the Nevada Motion Picture Division didn't charge Warner Brothers a location fee, claiming the $2 million "trickle down" effect of hosting the crew, some of whom danced the night away at the Luxor's Ra and took in New York-New York's soon-to-close "MADhattan," was a sufficient boost to the economy.
"Why charge them $3,000 when they'll be spending $2 million?" Holabird asked. "We don't want a token fee that's not going to do anything anyway, because they will be contributing to the community just by being here."
Commissioner Lorraine Hunt agreed that the county benefitted from the crew's stay. "Look at the sales tax revenues, the room tax," she said. "We realized we were going to inconvenience some of the public, but the return seemed so great."
"It is a direct injection into the economy," agreed Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Economic Development Corporation of Los Angeles County, and a film industry expert. "They're buying local goods, paying sales tax, occupancy tax. And there is a high multiplier effect -- for every direct job created, there's at least one other job impacted."
That, along with the prestige, is why luring film crews is such an aggressive business. "A lot of communities will shut down highways, provide police services at no charge," he pointed out. "You have to balance out -- what are you giving up to get this?"
A few gripe that those scales seemed out of whack -- aside from paying some Metro officers overtime for supervising the closure and a negligible $45 permit fee, neither the state nor the county were directly compensated.
Green Valley resident Arnie Stux, an engineer with Valence Technology Inc. in Henderson, wasn't personally inconvenienced by the closure -- but disapproved mainly on principal.
"To make it more of a hassle (to get to work) to make a movie doesn't seem right," he said. "The main beef I've heard is that the roads are constructed at taxpayer expense, and to have something like that, something should be given back to the people."
That sentiment inspires film producers entering a community to make sure they do give something back. And the producers of "LW4" were no exception, holding a press conference on Wednesday attended by Gibson and co-star Danny Glover, to donate $5,000 to Child Haven, a local shelter for abused children who had been allowed to tour the set.
Gibson joked with Commissioner Hunt, symbolically having her scratch his back, then returning the favor.
"Thank you, Las Vegas," shouted film producer Joel Silver.
In fact, it would seem the only way the city won't benefit from this project is in pure Las Vegas boosterism.
While many movies filmed here -- "Fools Rush In," "Vegas Vacation," "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" -- can be justified as free advertisements, the scene being filmed, an action sequence taking place on an unidentified California road, doesn't offer much justification in the way of product placement.
Instead, the benefits are more long-term, which is why the film commission hustled to approve the highway closing in a record two weeks, snatching it away from Southern California.
"This is one project, in terms of tourism, that is not going to do anything for us," Holabird conceded. "But within the industry, it will be known that this was pulled off. That a city our size was able to do it will impress the film industry. It will affect us for future projects, in that people will remember Las Vegas said yes."
And so far, that strategy seems to be working.
After the photo op, Silver pulled Commissioner Lorraine Hunt aside. "We have another one we're going to be coming in for," he said, promising her that they would be back.
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