Cathy Anderson

IN TWO DECADES WITH THE SAN DIEGO FILM COMMISSION, Cathy Anderson has earned a national reputation for innovations aimed at fostering the growth of regional film production. A native of Stockton, she’s a graduate of San Diego State University with a B.A. in theater arts and an M.A. in telecommunications and film. In addition to her duties as film commissioner, she’s produced public service announcements for Joan Rivers, Tom Arnold, Tori Spelling and Marshall Faulk, for which she received two regional Emmys and three Telly awards. Anderson’s script for an American Movie Classics feature on historic filming was shot on location in San Diego and aired nationally. She and her husband, Ernie, a retired city of San Diego executive, are parents of grown children Tiffany, who lives in San Jose, and Travis, a Carlsbad policeman. They and their eight rescued cats live in University City.

TOM BLAIR: The Film Commission has been with us 30 years, and you’ve been there almost from the beginning . . .

CATHY ANDERSON: The commission is 30; I’ve been with it for 20 years; and I’ve been film commissioner for 10.

TB: And I have a feeling few San Diegans really know what it’s all about. What does the film commission do?

CA: Basically, we attract film, video and print production to San Diego for economic benefit to the region. We do the permit process, and we problem-solve for film production.

TB: What kind of film production?

CA: Feature films, television movies and series, commercials, corporate films and print advertising.

TB: How did the commission come into being?

CA: It was the brainchild of Mayor Pete Wilson. He was trying to fix a filming issue surrounding the TV show Harry O, with David Janssen, which was being shot on location in San Diego in 1975. It was a bureaucratic nightmare for the film company. We just weren’t prepared to handle the day-to-day issues and problems with such a project. So they went back to Hollywood. Pete collaborated with the Chamber of Commerce, and within a year we had the first city film commission in California. Tony Brown headed it for the first two years, and then Wally Schlotter took over and led it for nearly 20 years.

TB: San Diegans may not know just how many movies have been filmed here. Do you know the exact number? And what are some of the biggies?

CA: Probably more than a hundred movies in recent years. The biggest ones? K-9, Anchorman, Jurassic Park, Almost Famous, Bruce Almighty, Top Gun, Titanic, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. And these are just since the Film Commission has been here.

TB: Can Hollywood producers find everything they need here?

CA: Just about anything. Almost Famous —a period film set in the ’60s and ’70s —is a great example. One of the casting directors told us, “We just love working in San Diego. We found a community that had it all ready for us. Where we didn’t even have to dress the locals for the ’60s or anything.” I said, “Where’s that?” He said, “Ocean Beach.”

TB: How important is TV filming, and what’s been produced here?

CA: Television is about 95 percent of our work. In addition to Harry O, we had Simon & Simon. We did the pilot for Nip/Tuck. We were scouted for E.R. We did episodes every season for Jag. We did X-Files—the first and final episodes—in Borrego. As for other San Diego–based series? Silk Stalkings, Renegade, with Lorenzo Lamas, High Tide, Veronica Mars. What catapulted us into the series game was Stu Segall, who came in 16 years ago. We basically made things easy for him to film here. And he established a production arm on Kearny Mesa—with 11 stages—including a sound stage in a Jack in the Box refrigeration house.

TB: What’s the economic impact on the city and region, and how do you assess that?

CA: We send each production a survey asking their San Diego shooting budget. We ask them how many locals they hired for their productions. We ask about hotels and restaurants, transportation, salaries —whatever they spent here to complete the production. We don’t even count secondary spending.

TB: What would be secondary spending?

CA: After they filmed Titanic here, I heard from Rick at American Shoe Repair on Broadway. He said, “Bring back another Titanic!” Said he’d repaired 100 pairs of shoes a day that got wet when they filmed the sinking. Now that’s secondary spending.

TB: So what did it bring to the local economy in 2006?

CA: Almost $80 million. In 2005, it was $100 million. By the middle of this 2007 fiscal year, we were already at $72 million, so we’ll surely beat our record. We are undoubtedly the biggest film-production center in California outside of Los Angeles.

TB: I know the bulk of your operating budget comes from the city of San Diego—out of transient occupancy taxes —collected mostly from hotels and motels. How much does the city contribute, and who else antes up?

CA: This year, the city contributed $660,000. The county contributed $40,000, and the Port of San Diego contributed $60,000. Those are our only income sources.

TB: With the city’s finances in a mess, has your budget support has been thinning?

CA: The city’s cut our budget 10 percent a year for the past four years—while our economic impact on the city has been soaring. When they started cutting budgets, unfortunately, they didn’t check to see which programs were amply funded. We weren’t. But since we’ve been so successful, nobody’s ever seen fit to support us with commensurate funding.

TB: I understand there’s a plan afoot to perhaps switch your primary funding from the city to a new group composed of hoteliers taxing themselves. How do you expect it to impact the Film Commission?

CA: As of this July, the end of our fiscal year, we have no commitment, no guarantee of funding—from the city or the new group. The talk is that the new group would take on 10 programs currently funded by the city’s TOT tax and keep some of these programs at the same budget. But for us, this is a challenge, because with production growing—just about triple this year—we’re lacking staff support, and it’s very difficult to operate.

TB: What’s the hardest job for the Film Commission?

CA: Keeping all the work we do for the industry fee-free. When Dick Murphy was mayor, they wanted to impose a fee on producers. That went against our mission. The lower cost of filming here is one thing that attracts the industry. Also, almost daily, we have an issue with a community group or local government where they’re trying to add a new hurdle to the procedure.

TB: Can you cite an example?

CA: Balboa Park has been a problem. We’re entrusted with being the point of contact for filming. We had a print shoot scheduled for the Eddie Bauer children’s clothing line in the park, and some of the bureaucrats decided it wouldn’t be a good idea, because the photographers might take photos of the other children at play. It took us several days to persuade them the photographers weren’t interested in the other children—they obviously wanted to shoot the children who were modeling the Eddie Bauer line.

TB: You must have had some disasters—or near-disasters—over the years.

CA: Oh, sure. Once, we had a low-budget independent feature filming in San Ysidro. They were looking for an abandoned, dilapidated house to look like a drug house. We found it. And then they decided they wanted to blow it up. Our Kathy McCurdy went to the fire department and asked if they’d like to use the explosion as a training exercise. They said yes. But we forgot to tell their inspectors exactly what the house was being used for. So when they get there, they see this “meth lab” in the house, and we were raided. They busted us. Of course, the film company was delighted, because the raid gave them a lot of good footage they hadn’t expected.

TB: Most folks expect movie people—with those inflated egos—to be difficult, at best. Who’s the nicest you’ve worked with?

CA: Lorenzo Lamas was great. He filmed Renegade here almost every day for about six years. He bought a home in Ramona and became very community-oriented. He’d walk into a pizza parlor and join the locals. Mitzi Kapture and Rob Estes of Silk Stalkings were like that, too. They mingled with the locals and were always happy to sign autographs

TB: And the nastiest?

CA: Well, Kim Basinger wasn’t very friendly. This was before she hit it big. She was doing a commercial for a department store in Spain. They filmed at a La Jolla house. And she wouldn’t allow the person who owned the house to take her picture—or even look at her. The owner basically had to hide in her own house.

TB: Movie companies can cause some controlled chaos when they come into a community to film. Do you get much resistance from certain neighborhoods?

CA: Del Mar and Coronado are communities we feel don’t really want filming, so they make it very difficult. But here’s an example of how things can go right: When Chuck Norris was filming the movie Top Dog, he played a cop, and he needed a house to use in the film as his residence. He found a place on Dudley Street in Point Loma, where they wanted to film from dusk to dawn for two weeks. They were planning to blow up a car in front of the house, and there would be automatic gunfire, and chase and fight scenes. Our police liaison was worried about noise abatement. So we took care of that. Chuck and I, and his brother Aaron, walked a two-block radius around the filming, knocked on every door, and this is what Chuck said: “You’re invited, all night long, every night we’re filming, to have dinner with us. We have a cappuccino truck. We’ll sign autographs; your children can come and watch. We may use some of you as extras. But we’ll blow up cars and make noise.” We got 100 percent approval from the neighbors.

TB: What’s your favorite movie?

CA: To work on? Traffic. It was so big; such a big budget and so challenging.

TB: Your favorite movie star?

CA: My favorite to work with was James Darren. After being a fan in my teens, I met him on the set of Silk Stalkings, when he was directing. Stu Segall introduced me to my heartthrob. I must have looked dazed, because he planted a kiss on me. I guess I was dazed. On the way home, I called my husband, Ernie, to ask him where I was. We live in University City. Turned out I’d driven to Ramona after leaving the Silk Stalkings set. I still can’t get over James Darren.

TB: Anyone else?

CA: Keifer Sutherland. When he was wrapping up filming here on 24, he went into the bar at the Hyatt Islandia, where he was staying, and asked them to keep the bar open after midnight—so he and his crew could celebrate the end of filming. They did, and he paid them extra for that.

TB: Ah, good, more secondary spending.

Do you like what you read? Subscribe to San Diego Magazine »