Unveiled: The Mysterious Tale Behind "A Story Idea Each Day for a Month"—Day 15
Imagine transforming your humble abode into the next cinematic masterpiece, where instead of brewing your morning coffee, a leading man is staring out your kitchen window pondering life’s big questions, or perhaps a love scene unfolds in your living room amidst your tastefully curated decor.
Would you leap at the chance to allow Hollywood to invade your personal sanctuary for a cool $5,000 a day? I’ve always mused on what homeowners really think when those scouts come around, clipboard in hand, ready to sprinkle a bit of magic and mayhem into their day-to-day. Having spent years scouting locations myself, the allure of seeing a film set in your home is real, but so are the butterflies in your stomach at the thought of someone scuffing your hardwood floors!
Here we dive into the peculiar world where the fantastical meets the familiar, where movies literally come home, and homeowners play the dual role of property manager and set manager. How do they cope with the transformation of their private spaces into public spectacles? What’s the emotional rollercoaster like?
Curious to know more about the enchanting yet sometimes nerve-wracking experience? LEARN MORE vede to attract film crews and turn their home into a set.
This is the 15th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.
Today’s story idea: “Would You Turn Over Your Home to a Hollywood Film Crew for $5,000 a Day?”
There was a time when legendary location scout Lori Balton was like a modern-day Philip Marlowe, trolling the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, in search of the perfect private home to shoot. “We used to literally drive around and look at the front of the house and we were kind of anthropologists in a way,” she says. “You look at the outside of the house, and you look for clues, like what kind of car did they drive? Do they have kids? And then you’d leave a letter and then you’d go and look at the house.”
While working on Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi (1996), Balton detected the perfect SoCal home to stand in for the Old South. “In Sierra Madre, I passed this house and I just stepped on the brakes, backed up, and I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s it,’ ” she recalls. “It was this old farmhouse that was still there, and I shot it. And when I came back, everyone was so amazed. We shot the whole thing there, exterior and interior.”
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As for her favorite interiors, open floor plans, which can be shot to look like separate rooms, are a perennial favorite. “I like a bigger house that we can make feel small, because if it’s a house that’s too small, you can never make it feel big,” she says. “And we’ve got an awful lot of equipment that has to fit inside.”
The next step is to convince homeowners to rent out their house — a tricky proposition given perennial worries about loud crews, broken furniture and scraped walls. Even Balton admits she was wary when she was approached by a location manager about filming in her own house. “I thought, ‘She’s never going to shoot here, so sure, take a look,’ ” Balton says. “They ended up wanting to shoot there, and my first reaction — to myself — was, ‘Fuck no. I don’t want people in my house.’ Then I said, ‘Come on, you talk people into this every day, you have to.’ And it was a great experience.”
Actress and acting coach Holly Gagnier had no such qualms when it became clear that her storybook 1926 Tudor in Toluca Lake was ideal for filming. And she wasn’t concerned about potential for damage. “I’ve worked so much that I know what sticklers they were for us not touching certain things, not using the bathrooms. I’ve really seen it firsthand, unless it’s just some crappy crew,” she…
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