Rent out your house for porn shoots
Patient Zero 2.03.....2-time Copper Bowl MVP
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By Nadja Brandt and Daniel Taub
Jan. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Jayshree Gupta reclined on an English-style sofa in
her Beverly Hills penthouse as crews buzzed around taping protective paper
over the hardwood floors and wheeling in crates of camera gear.
She was hosting a television-commercial shoot. It meant allowing dozens of
strangers and 400-pound klieg lights into her home for a full day, and it
was worth every minute, Gupta said.
"I am doing it because I need money to maintain my lifestyle," she said,
perched near a portrait of herself painted by her friend Barbara Carrera,
the Bond girl in 1983's "Never Say Never Again." "A lot of my money is
either gone or tied up. Right now I am hurting."
Gupta, a clothing and jewelry designer, is among an increasing number of
recession-pinched Los Angeles homeowners turning to Hollywood for help,
offering their houses as sets for feature films, commercials and even adult
movies.
"We are getting a lot of calls," said Joseph Darrell, whose Los
Angeles-based Joe Darrell Location Service represents Gupta. "They say, 'Can
you help me to bring a production to my home, because I have trouble making
my payments.'"
The daily fee paid for the sort of work done at Gupta's 3,000-square-foot
condo in the city's signature 90210 ZIP code is usually $2,000 to $3,000,
Darrell said. That would cover about half of her monthly household bills,
including maid service.
DayGlo Yellow
"I am praying, praying, for more productions to come in," Gupta said. "I
thought it was a brilliant idea to help myself."
She declined to say how much she was paid, and wouldn't give her age. "Not
in this town," Gupta said with a chuckle.
At Los Angeles-based Plan A Locations, more than a dozen calls are coming in
each week, up from about two a week a year ago, said owner Marylin Bitner.
"We're getting all sorts of houses," Bitner said. "From small homes where
owners are hoping production money will save their house to very large
mansions where owners hope to avoid having to dig into their savings or
having to sell stocks."
Cosmetic changes are often required. Crews installed a new gate outside the
house of a Plan A Locations client who dubbed it the "pay-it-forward" gate,
Bitner said. Another client "almost had a heart attack" when he saw his
living room had been painted DayGlo yellow, she said.
"This kind of stuff happens very often," she said. "But then there is the
thrill to meet Hollywood celebrities. We've had Alec Baldwin, Jake
Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr., among many others. They are always posing
with our clients' kids."
No Taxes
Famous homes have starred in movies, including 1997's "L.A. Confidential,"
which showcases Richard Neutra's 1929 Lovell House near the Griffith
Observatory. Hollywood has also thrown unknown homes into the limelight,
including one in Studio City used for exterior shots of the residence on the
1970s sitcom "The Brady Bunch."
Another upside: Income from residential filming for fewer than 15 days a
year isn't subject to federal taxes, according to the Internal Revenue
Service.
Owners of commercial properties also are more willing these days to rent
their sites for shoots, said Pete Brosnan, a partner in Los Angeles-based
scouting company Hollywood Locations.
His company is helping the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art advertise
its Geffen Contemporary exhibit space, a former warehouse in downtown Los
Angeles that has been closed temporarily to save money.
It wouldn't be the location's first star turn: parts of 2000's "Gone in 60
Seconds," starring Nicolas Cage, were filmed there.
More Parking
While office buildings once commanded $6,500 or more per day, owners settle
for less now, said Darrell, whose company has scouted locations for NBC's
"The Medium" and the Sony Corp. film "Pineapple Express."
Local film, TV and commercial filming outside of studio lots fell 8.1
percent in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as movie-making reached
its lowest since at least 1993, FilmL.A. Inc., the nonprofit that
coordinates permits, said this week. TV production climbed 14 percent.
Diana Lee, a manager at Los Angeles-based Jamison Services Inc., a closely
held commercial-property owner, said she agreed to $1,000 a day for use of a
building in Torrance that has been vacant for six months.
"Anything is better than nothing," Darrell said he advises clients,
including Lee. "I often tell them, 'Look, it's not big-budget, but it's
better than a sharp stick in the eye.'"
Property owners tend to be more accommodating, said Carin Bowman, owner of
Malibu-based Access Locations Inc. "They may make more parking spots
available or care less about what production teams do."
In My Tub?
Jerry Mendoza says he's willing to go to an extreme he wouldn't have before
the real estate slump. It hit Southern California hard, with the median home
price in a six-county region falling a record 34 percent in November to
$285,000, according to research company MDA DataQuick.
His four-bedroom house in suburban Burbank, which Mendoza built in 2006,
didn't sell for the $1.3 million he asked, and when renters left in November
he began leasing it for filming. The most he received for a day was $1,300,
he said. So he posted an Internet notice that the property, which has an
eight-person hot tub, was available to the adult-film industry, which he had
heard pays as much as $5,000 a day.
A few months ago, "I probably would've said, 'You want to do what in here?'"
he said. "That's reserved for me and the missus."
--
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