Hollywood movies plan to film scenes in San Juan Bautista

It’s all in Spanish.

He used to be in town Since ghosts seem to inhabit every historic building, the residents of San Juan Bautista probably didn’t care about the lights that flashed at night through the second floor windows of Zaneta’s house.

But far from being signs of visiting spirits from the afterlife, they are actually the work of various otherworldly beings: a crew preparing the State Park building for the filming of a major Hollywood production.

On February 8, City Manager Don Reynolds confirmed that he had met with location scouts from Warner Brothers to enable the production crew to spend four days in the city at the end of February, filming between 6pm and 6am on Mission Plaza, Zanetta’s home. , the bar at the Plaza Hotel and the Mission itself have been named as possible locations.

Given the usual secrecy surrounding such productions, often rivaling plans for the Normandy invasion, no one knows much, and those who do know the whole story, more often than not, don’t talk. Representatives for State Park and Mission San Juan Bautista were quick to respond with “no comment” to BenitoLink’s inquiries.

The Internet Movie Database is also relatively silent about the film, tentatively called Project BC, saying the plot is “under the hood” and nothing more. “They’re very secretive about the actual movie itself,” Reynolds said. “In fact, the people running the site don’t really understand the nature or subject of the film.”

However, we do know that it stars Academy Award winner Leonardo DiCaprio and two-time Academy Award winner Sean Penn, and that it is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, an eleven-time Academy Award nominee.

The film had a budget of $100 million, and the cast filmed in other small California towns such as Eureka (“Leonardo DiCaprio’s groundbreaking film brings high-speed chases and special effects to NorCal towns”), and Humboldt (“First look at Leonardo DiCaprio’s character”). . for the new Paul Thomas Anderson movie”), Trinidad, Arcata and Cotten (“Warner Bros. acquired Cutten and Arcata in the last couple of days, here’s what we know”).

The film crew was reinforcing the floors in Zanetta’s house, “doing what they needed to do to get their equipment into the building” — hence the lights on at night, Reynolds said. The second floor of the house was also used for the investigation scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film “Vertigo,” the last major Hollywood film to use the state park and mission as a location. (Luis Valdez was also allowed to use the assignment in his production of “La Pastorela” from the 1991 PBS Great Performance, as well as the 2008 live production of “La Virgen del Tepeyac.”)

Although the city does not charge any film licensing fees, San Juan Bautista would benefit financially from the filming. The film crew will rent the community center for three weeks at a rate of $600 a day, and Reynolds said local hotels are booked.

“They will use our restaurants, too,” he said. “I’m trying to get the word out to the ones that are closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Maybe they’ll change their minds and open up. We’ll see what happens.”

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