cars on the set

[Pottree@domain.elided]

Like Felix, one of our cars (the Milano that's For sale now, plug plug) 
appears in a movie.  The picture is Bella Mafia and they used the car to 
dress the LA harbor to work as an Italian port.  I found the picture so 
terrible that I couldn't get through it to the scene where our car appears, 
but they paid nicely for it and didn't harm the car in any way.  Since the 
call (start time) was very early in the am (typical), we delivered the car 
the night before and they locked it up and kept in under guard with the rest 
of the vehicles, etc. and we picked it up after they wrapped the shoot the 
next day.  Payment was prompt and negotiable and turned into a new H2O pump 
and some other items, so in a way the car was paying its own way.

I am in awe of the engineering and mechanical expertise around here, but when 
it comes to movies I am on firmer ground because that's my field.  Very 
rarely would a film unit renting a car (or anything) treat it in a cavalier 
manner as was described here (concerning a model T Ford).  That is very 
unusual.  The one thing movie companies fear a lot (after doing anything 
original, that is, but that's another thread... ) is liability, and it's much 
easier and cheaper to be careful and respectful of rented props and 
practicals (e.g.: a running car) than to face the wrath of a lawsuit later on.

I wrote a film (now in preproduction) that features a white late model 
spider, partly because that car helps define the character who drives it, 
partly because there's a kid of chase and the bad guys are in a black sedan 
and the heroine is in the white spider to follow the Hollywood convention of 
good guys wearing white hats and riding white horses in cowboy movies from 
the "poverty row" days, and partly because I hoped to buy the car from the 
production for my wife when shooting is done.

However, I happened to wind up as one of the producers on this film, and I 
happened to be in a place where such a spider, with auto transmission (I've 
been there and done that with actresses who announce on the set with time 
ticking by at $5000 an hour that they didn't know they'd have to drive a 
CLUTCH car), just "followed me home."

So, don't be too paranoid about renting out your car for filming.  And watch 
for my BW's new white 91 spider someday (I hope!) coming to a theater near 
you!

Charlie
AROSC outgoing president
87 Milano Gold FOR SALE
84 GTV6
91 Spider aka "The Starlet" and "The Cream Puff"

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