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Accustomed to being in a town where ghosts seem to inhabit every historic building, San Juan Bautista residents may not have paid any mind to the lights that have been flickering at night through the second-floor windows of the Zanetta House.
But far from being signs of spirits visiting from the afterlife, it’s actually the work of different other-worldly beings: a crew prepping the State Park building for a film shoot in a major Hollywood production.
On Feb. 8, City Manager Don Reynolds confirmed that he had met with location scouts from Warner Brothers to enable a production crew to spend four days in town at the end of February, shooting between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. Mission Plaza, the Zanetta House, the bar at the Plaza Hotel and the Mission itself have been named as likely locations.
Given the usual secrecy around such productions, which often rivals that of the plans for the invasion of Normandy, little information is available, and those who do know the whole story are, for the most part, not talking. Representatives of the State Park and Mission San Juan Bautista have been quick to respond with “no comment” to BenitoLink’s inquiries.
The Internet Movie Database is also relatively silent about the film, which is tentatively being called the BC Project, saying that the plot is “under wraps” and nothing more. “They’re kind of secretive about the actual movie itself,” Reynolds said. “In fact, the location folks don’t really understand the nature of the film or its theme.”
We do know, however, that it stars Academy Award Winner Leonardo DiCaprio and two-time Academy Award Winner Sean Penn and that it is being directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, an eleven-time Academy Award nominee.
The film has a $100 million budget, and crews have been shooting in other small California towns like Eureka (“Major Leonardo DiCaprio movie brings high-speed chases, special effects to NorCal towns”), Humboldt (“First look at Leonardo DiCaprio in character for new Paul Thomas Anderson film”), Trinidad, Arcata and Cutten (“Warner Bros. took over Cutten and Arcata the past two days and here is what we know”).
Reynolds said the film crew has been reinforcing the floors at the Zanetta house, “doing what they need to do to get their equipment in the building”—hence the lights at night. The second floor of the house was also used for the inquest scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film “Vertigo,” the last major Hollywood film to use the state park and the Mission as a location. (Luis Valdez was also allowed to use the mission for his 1991 PBS Great Performances production of “La Pastorela,” as well as a 2008 live production of “La Virgen del Tepeyac.”)
Though the city has no film licensing fee, San Juan Bautista stands to gain financially from the shoot. The film crew will be renting the Community Center for three weeks at a rate of $600 a day and Reynolds said the local hotels are booked up.
“They will also be using our restaurants,” he said. “I’m trying to get the word out to the ones that are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Maybe they will change their minds and open up. We’ll see what happens.”
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