Mr. Movies
During April and May this year, Wally Schlotter's Motion Picture and Television Bureau had 46 film projects on the streets of San Diego. All that action adds up to an $8-million-a-year economic boost for the city.

by Thomas Shess Jr.

One of Columbia Pictures' newest features, Little Nikita, directed by Richard Benjamin and filmed in and around San Diego in late 1986 and early 1987, stars Sidney Poitier and newcomer River Phoenix. Nikita is scheduled for release in late 1987.

        It's easy to tell when Wally Schlotter is happy. He revs up to 78 rpm from his usual 33 1/3. And lately he's been at full tilt for good reason. Schlotter has arrived early at his 16th-floor office in the Chamber building in the heart of downtown. At the moment he's busy answering questions fired at him by a crusty, no-nonsense producer who is about to bring his next movie to San Diego. The call came out of the blue at 7:45 a.m. just as Schlotter was watching Dudley Moore being interviewed on ABC-TV's Good Morning America.
         Moore and company are chatting on the tube about the good times they are having on location at the new U.S. Naval Hospital in San Diego, where he was in the midst of filming Like Father Like Son, a zany comedy out of the Tri-Star Productions camp. Schlotter wraps up his phone call and flashes a big okay sign. Another busy day for Wally Schlotter.
         As head of San Diego's Motion Picture and Television Bureau (MPTB), it's Schlotter's job to convince movie-making moguls from all over the world that San Diego is a socko city in which to shoot a film. And although Schlotter was in Los Angeles hustling new business when Moore came down to make his arrangements, the film bureau had already created the kind of climate that attracted producers to San Diego.
         "I just love it when we get national publicity like this for San Diego," Schlotter says, pointing to the TV set. "It's great for San Diego and it lets the film industry know it's a super place to go on location."
         Though Dudley Moore never left the Naval Hospital during the few days he was in town, Richard Benjamin's Little Nikita "is definitely a San Diego film. They were here almost a month," says Schlotter. A spy thriller that combines drama with touches of comedy, Little Nikita was filmed all over San Diego county, hitting North County, downtown, La Mesa and locations all along the trolley line. The film is Sidney Poitier's return to the screen after a nine-year hiatus. It's Columbia Pictures' big effort of the year and will be out in November.
         If you've seen motion picture and television production crews filming in the city, you've witnessed the results of San Diego's hard-working film bureau. "During April and May we had 46 projects on the streets of San Diego," Schlotter says with pride. That tally includes documentaries, industrial films, movies like Moore's and Benjamin's, TV commercials, print advertisements and others.
         And if you've seen Top Gun in your local movie house, you've seen firsthand just one of the countless films and commercials the local MPTB has lured to San Diego County. Schlotter holds up a back issue of Hollywood Reporter that reports Top Gun made more money than any other film in 1986. Of course, San Diegans know it was filmed at NAS Miramar, Coronado, NTC and downtown San Diego.
         The news of Top Gun's world-wide triumph is perfectly timed. "San Diego couldn't be hotter right now," Schlotter says, referring to the recent publicity the city has generated with the America's Cup and as the host for the next Super Bowl. The lucky roll comes on the heels of the film bureau's recent tenth anniversary -- not a bad birthday present.
         You see a lot of San Diego reflected in Schlotter's face: hard working, youthful, idealistic, good looking, unabrasive and enthusiastic. The 36-year-old SDSU graduate has been head of the "Pic Bureau," as Daily Variety calls it, for nine of its ten years. In that time he has almost singlehandedly put the San Diego film bureau on the map. Visiting film crews drop, on the average, $8 million a year into the pockets of San Diego service industries like hotels and restaurants.
         What Schlotter does best is facilitate. He interfaces between the film industry on location and all the bureaucratic fiefdoms in city and county governments. "We want to keep the locals smiling, and we want to keep the film crews happy," he explains.
        To do this job, Schlotter has a tiny but talented staff that includes Assistant Director Greg Perry, secretary Treva Cronk and one volunteer intern, Cathy Anderson. The City Council's recent approval of the film bureau's annual budget -- approximately $350,000 -- means Schlotter will be able to hire another full-time staffer and to computerize his office.
         "Wally works literally every hour of every day," says Lee Grissom, president and general manager of the Greater San Diego Chamber of Commerce, and the man who hired Schlotter. The MPTB is a division of the chamber.
         "Working with him is amazing," says Greg Perry. "I know of no one with such genuine and boundless enthusiasm. And it's all real."
         "I get teased that this job is glitz and sizzle 24 hours a day," Schlotter says. "But that's not the everyday story."
         Despite his constant proximity to the rich and famous, Schlotter is not one to bandy celebrity gossip. "I'd love to tell all, because there have been some wild times," he admits. But a kiss-and-tell attitude about the stars' backstage behavior could be the kiss of death for the bureau. Most of the requests for gossip come from out-of-town newspapers and tabloids, says Schlotter. "Our local press is low-key about celebrities, which is refreshing."
         But sometimes it's hard on the ego, he reflects. "After being with Tom Cruise and company during months and months of shooting, Tom was recently re-introduced to me. He cheerfully said, 'Hello,' shook my hand, flashed that smile and whispered to his agent, 'Who's he?'"
         If Schlotter is tight-lipped about star gossip, he's just the opposite about many of the industry programs his office and fellow San Diegans have helped instigate. Thanks to political leaders like San Diego Councilman Ed Struiksma, who currently sits on the California Motion Picture Council, overly tough labor laws have been relaxed to allow actors under 18 years of age to work longer hours in front of the camera. Also in progress is legislation to make it easier for highly skilled foreign cinematographers to work in California.
         "We fought and won a battle against the State Board of Equalization when it wanted to add another tax on film production," says Schlotter. That victory kept many film projects in California. According to Struiksma, the State Film Council, founded in 1985, was inspired by the success of San Diego's film bureau.
        Schlotter is the first to point out not everything filmed here has been an artistic wonder. There was The Big Mouth, with Jerry Lewis, and the late Marty Feldman's In God We Trust. And then there was Scavenger Hunt, a box-office flop. But Schlotter says, "This film was one of the most fun to work with. Everyone on the crew enjoyed it here. It starred Tony Randall, Cloris Leachman, Richard Benjamin and Arnold Schwarzenegger. It wasn't really that bad, but it's even hard to find it at Video Library." The Scavenger Hunt production, during its eight weeks in San Diego, spent $1 million, according to MPTB statistics.
         During the filming of Scavenger Hunt, producer Steve Vail wanted then-mayor Pete Wilson to play himself and submit to having a pie thrown in his face. Wilson balked. A member of his administrative staff recalls, "Pete wasn't that keen on getting his face into the picture, especially with a pie thrown at it."
         But Wilson remembered the early days of the film bureau when he had taken Schlotter to Hollywood and thrown a sparsely attended "road show" to pitch the assets of the city as a scenic film location. So he relented and offered the producers his mug -- if they would kick in $20,000 for a local charity. The producers said, "Don't call us, Your Honor, we'll call you."
         Another civic leader wasn't so shy. Then-Supervisor Roger Hedgecock made his film debut with a few walk-on lines as a defense attorney in Borderline, which also starred Charles Bronson. Schlotter recalls one memorable comment on Hedgecock's budding film work. It came from Lee Grissom, who told San Diego Magazine: "I personally hope this will open up some new career alternatives for Hedgecock."
         To demonstrate that the film bureau plays no political favorites, San Diego Union columnist Tom Blair, a frequent Hedgecock critic, was invited to appear in a film shot on location. "It was called Partners and it starred John Hurt," Blair recalls. "They paid me $50 for all day. I played a cop in a bar scene. The back of my head has been my cinematic contribution so far."
         Partners didn't exactly become box-office legend. "I didn't see it until it came out at the video stores," Blair says wryly.
         But life hasn't been a series of non-hits for the bureau. The local press has paid serious attention to Destiny, a Forties-era film recently shot downtown. It stars William Hurt, Timothy Hutton, Stockard Channing "and the Amtrak Depot," Schlotter says. Look for Destiny to be released later this year.
         On the television side, the bureau has its share of prominent hits. The showcase production is Simon & Simon, a series still on national television. The fast-paced detective show frequently has been the number-one rated show during its six-year roller-coaster career.
         But it wasn't always smooth sailing in San Diego for out-of-town production companies. Let's go back to the mid-Seventies, before Schlotter was hired.
         Enter the TV series Harry O. This sleuth-and-dagger show starred the late David Janssen and became the catalyst for the founding of the local Motion Picture and Television Bureau.
         The cast and crew of Harry O came to town because other TV shows with out-of-Hollywood locations, like Hawaii Five-O and the Streets of San Francisco, were doing well in the ratings. The show's producer, Jerry Thorpe, had made a movie-of-the-week in San Diego called Dial Hotline. He liked it here, and besides, it was only a couple of hours down the highway from Warner Brothers.
         Another, albeit less glamorous, reason the producers wanted to shoot out of town was that Los Angeles has a reputation in show-business circles as the most uncooperative city in the world. Too much red tape, too many municipalities and too many departments. "Even with half a century of film experience to its credit, Los Angeles didn't make it easy for movie and TV crews to film on its streets," says Schlotter. Plus, word had spread and everyone was charging astronomical location fees, the monies producers pay to use particular sites.
         The moguls looked south. With enough photographic sites to make for a unique look and a low-key location-fee arrangement, San Diego had the green light. But no sooner had the camera trucks rolled into town than the producers of Harry O began seeing red.
         "What we didn't expect was the amount of red-tape involved," reflects producer Thorpe. The result was delay upon delay -- and in show-business production, time is literally money.
         Other problems surfaced. The Screen Extras Guild, based in Los Angeles, insisted its members be used. And since most of them lived in Los Angeles, that meant they had to be transported to and housed in San Diego. That created logistic delays and skyrocketed the budget.
         Officials at San Diego International Airport were not cooperative with Harry O's film crews. Bud McDonald, airport director, issued his now-famous line: "I'm not here to win friends. I'm running an airport." More delays.
         Soon the 60-person crew became disgruntled. The Coastal Commission created a snafu over the use of a stretch of beach. The Los Angeles-based catering company ran afoul of the local health department. All in all, muses Otto Bos, who currently serves as director of public affairs and communications to Senator Pete Wilson, it was a royal mess.
         According to a special report on the rise and fall of Harry O in San Diego, commissioned by Mayor Pete Wilson and prepared by John Freeman, the catering hassles, while not the most complex or noteworthy, eventually doomed Detective Harry Orwell's sojourn here. Harry O's relations with the city had taken on the aspects of a classic Orwellian nightmare.
         Finally the series made it in time for a fall premiere on ABC in September 1974. The first few episodes played to mixed national reviews. San Diegans naturally were impressed, especially Mayor Wilson. After all, there was David Janssen jogging along a Coronado beach and hopping off a San Diego Transit bus near Belmont Park. We were delighted and proud at seeing "ourselves" on television, according to His Honor.