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Came home this afternoon to a total traffic nightmare in my little neighborhood. I understand that NetFlix is filming a show, House of Cards, and they are using the house on my friend up the street. Our neighborhood has ONE through street and three side streets. Guess which one they have blocked? Yep; the through street. They have trucks EVERYWHERE. The side streets are also half blocked. Understand they will be here two days. As I said they are filming on the front porch of my friend and paying him $1200.00 per day to use it.

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Frank
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan executed next week. - George S. Patton
http://www.marylandshallissue.org/

Call the cops and politely ask them to ORDER those idiots rearrange to their equipment so people can get to and from their homes. They are also blocking emergency vehicle access!

ASAP!

John Davies
Spokane WA

They are not 'blocking the streets' except for the few minutes when they are actually filming. The rest of the time it is just a LOT of trucks taking up half the street. The biggest problem is the 'gawkers' looking to see Kevin Spacey and the rest of the cast. They are five houses from me and I can guarantee that I will not be one of the aforementioned gawkers.

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Frank
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan executed next week. - George S. Patton
http://www.marylandshallissue.org/

Way back in the 70's for a time I was a local coordinator for Universal and Disney, and for many commercials shot on and around the Monterey Penisula in CA (a very popular location then). I obtained permits, leased properties and vehicles, quarters for production staff, actors and film crews, arranged local supplies and union labor for set building and later removal, hired union drivers and local services, set up after parties, filled in as a stunt driver once, settled local accounts after filming and clean up, and anything else a local could do better than a non local. Unfortunately for residents, the revenue and wages they bring into a community, which is very substantial, paves the way for them to do just about anything they want to. Local government usually caters to them and gets their cut in permit fees and free advertising. As for traffic, I can remember the Escape to Witch Mountain film for Disney and shutting down a portion of the famous Seventeen Mile Drive in Pebble Beach for periods of days on end that put out the rich and famous who lived there; several blocks of Ocean Blvd in Carmel's business district for a couple of days for a commercial; and shutting down the famous Highway One south of Carmel near Garapatta Creek for the made for TV movie Linda off and on for about 3 weeks while the set was built and the filming completed. Now a state park, then it was a nudists beach (so the between "takes" beach football with actors and staff got interesting - especially with Stella Stevens).
I'm way out of touch now naturally, but $1200/day sounds very cheap. We paid as much as thousands to tens of thousands to tie up individual properties 40 years ago even for just a single day.

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I choose not to belong to any choirs, so please don’t preach to me about yours.

USN 1967-1971
™WildCalls2K
™Digger Wars

Use to Live in a Marina right by the OLD Henry Ford Plant in Long Beach. The road leading to the marina and on across the drawbridge to Terminal Island was named "Henry Ford Ave" and the area was used frequently for filming movies and tv (99 44/100ths Dead; Emergency, Kojack, and the one that had Raymond Burr in a wheel chair). Any way, I'd come home from work down Anaheim St and turn left onto Henry Ford and find a road block with two cps there. Roll the window down and say "I LIVE down there in the Marina" and get waved on through, same thing pulling into the marina parking lot. DID get invited to enjoy the goodies on the catering truck more than once

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PJSD

Rest Assured, they have a series of permits and the police/emergency services are supervising the whole operation.

Sheesh. I recall being stuck on the (old 93) highway on either side of Hoover Dam 3-4 times, while a movie scene was being shot. Talk about inconvenienced. I even missed a plane once because of a two hour delay think it was a Chevy Chase film ?

Each time dozens if not hundreds of vehicles were "detained" and everyone was out of their cars milling around on the switchbacks. Once I was a couple cars behind a flatbed tarped over with signs reading "High explosives - stay back 500 feet". Yeah, right. It was a parking lot with people smoking everywhere!

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If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort, you will find neither comfort nor truth." --C.S. Lewis
The man who lets a leader prescribe his course, is a wreck being towed to the scrap heap. - Ayn Rand
"Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character." - A. Einstein

Glad you had a good experience with folks that did care about public relations. In LA County location filming would not only be daily, but in several places as well daily most likely. So I'd bet the locals drive into delays because of them all the time in southern CA. While the Monterey Peninsula was a popular location for films, commercials, documentaries, and occassionally for a story line or two of some TV series, not all that many per year on average were done there.

Public relations was a concern to me as a resident and the LC, so I did whatever I could to accommodate residents and tourists. Not always easy on the Monterey Peninsula with very limited through roads in some places (back then anyway). As the LC I had clout and could smoothe things over most of the time though, especially important on Hwy 1 that is the only road with no other easy way to get through south from Carmel along the coast. The fly in the ointment sometimes was the director, or if present the producer as some of them couldn't care less about public relations on location. With directors it was all about getting the shoot wanted no matter what, with producers staying on budget. Battles with the unyeilding types were common, but I managed to win many of the battles by reasoning with them. Delays between takes are very common on a location set for any of many different reasons, and they can be very long, even hours. So it's crazy to keep roads blocked unnecessarily during them. I always had a shooting schedule and script (plus their updates that can change several times each day), and was always on location during all ops at it to handle whatever came up. So I always knew what the flow was at the moment on location. Sometimes I just ignored them and opened the roads anyway long enough to clear traffic when I knew it wouldn't interfere with production anyway. Some of the nastier types didn't like it, but I never failed to get my high for the time pay checks or the bonuses after (that often were way more than all the pay checks combined), and I got all the future work I wanted.

I was a Perry Mason fan (50's/60's), so also enjoyed Burr's series that you mentioned that started right after it - "Ironsides" (mid 60's).

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I choose not to belong to any choirs, so please don’t preach to me about yours.

USN 1967-1971
™WildCalls2K
™Digger Wars

In my area filming is a regular occurance. Here they hire off duty/retired cops to handle traffic and secure the area. They'll even try and tell residents they can't go to their homes or drive down the street to their homes/garages. Truth is they can't.

One of my neighbors, well he used to be, he's passed, is just the sort to push things like this. They pretty much had access to his house blocked. So, him being him, he just had to go to the store and come home, several times. The off duty/retired cop tried to bluff him into staying out after he had left. Big mistake. See, it was an LA city permit to film in LA city, using off duty/retired LA city cops. We live in LA county. He simply called the Sheriff and insisted that they arrest the folks blocking county streets.

I miss him. He provided so much entertainment for the neighborhood. And really was a nice guy. Just retired and got bored sometimes.

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Jeepnik "AKA Old Eyes"
Go low, go slow, and preferrably in the dark

One time they were filming a scene for "KOJAK" IN our Marina; They came over to our Boat and asked that we removes the towels and "other" laundry from the lifelines and to PLEASE keep our dog below decks.
I don't remeber the name of the episode, but it was one where they were looking for a suspect in a "New York" Marina; If you look quick enough, you can see my sailboat in the background.
The UP SIDE was that I got to meet George Savalas and he held my son (my middle one that's now 35 ); He was only about 5 months old. I also got shown the pictures of George's kids ( they looked JUST LIKE HIM, poor kids>). He was a really nice guy. Neever did see Telly though.

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PJSD

All reminds me of the first part of the book "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" where they are trying to fill a civil war scene in Savannah and the guy who the book is about hangs a Nazi flag in front of his house.