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Sarasota's Goal Is To Sway Movie Location Managers

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By TOM BAYLES, Sarasota Herald-Tribune

Published: November 3, 2007

MYAKKA RIVER STATE PARK - They came because of memories of Jeanne Corcoran, the Vegas Strip and Nevada's high desert.

Corcoran, the new head of the Sarasota County Film & Entertainment Office, hopes they come back for the Ca d'Zan, white-sand beaches and Florida backwater.

The former manager for the Nevada Film Office in Las Vegas drew on her connections and brought seven Hollywood location managers to tour the region recently in hopes of ending what has been a five-year dearth of major studio films being shot in Southwest Florida.

After seeing the most picturesque places, the entertainment folks were seeing potential.

"Sarasota County is a good match for a number of locations," said Ilt Jones, who just wrapped "John Hancock," a film starring Will Smith, and picked some shooting spots for the summer Steven Spielberg production "Transformers." "California is a good match for a variety of places, but we don't have this type of flora and fauna."

At Myakka River State Park, group members noted that marshes and stands of palm trees could be a setting for a film set in a Central American jungle, Mexico or even still-recovering New Orleans.

The most recent big-studio movie to be shot in Sarasota, Manatee or Charlotte counties was in 2002. Denzel Washington sightings became commonplace on Gasparilla Island while the Academy Award winner was filming the cop thriller "Out of Time."

The heyday might have been 1997, when two productions were filming in the area. In Sarasota County, it was "Great Expectations," a contemporary adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel starring Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow and Robert De Niro. In Manatee - more specifically, the city of Palmetto - Woody Harrelson and Elisabeth Shue shot a movie sharing the city's name and focusing on an ex-con getting wrapped up in a kidnapping scheme.

Corcoran, a Sarasota native, used her successful seven years in Las Vegas to bring scouts for big-budget Hollywood films to a more laid-back Southwest Florida.

"I'm a Jill of all trades," Corcoran said as the tour continued through Historic Spanish Point in Osprey. "This industry is all about relationship building. The relations are key."

The lives of location managers are anything but boring. They travel endlessly looking for just the right spots on which to shoot a film.

Then they must arrange the shoots - often at dozens of places during filming. Then there are local police and fire departments to deal with, caterers to hire, lodging to be found for 30 or more crew members and the constant need to fix things that go awry during filming.

Corcoran recalls helping location managers do things as odd as airlifting a grand piano into the middle of a desert and finding a 4-foot-tall midget who looked like Liberace.

By the end of a two-day tour, the group had visited or drove through more than 20 places from Manasota Key to Snook Haven in Venice to the Ca d'Zan adjacent to the Ringling Museum.

"We are trying to wake up Hollywood," said Corcoran, who has been on the job since February.

Most of the cost of the $17,000 trip was paid for by sponsors and in-kind donations of hotel rooms and meals.

Corcoran hopes to make the tours a twice-yearly event: an October tour for location managers and an April tour for producers.

She liked what she heard Monday.

"Oh, that's beautiful," said Kathy McCurdy, a location manager for HBO's "Entourage," when she saw the tiny Mary's Chapel in Historic Spanish Point.

For McCurdy, the view from her free room provided by the Lido Beach Resort gave her the first idea for a location.

"The houses around the water. That's if any of them would be interested in having a film shot there."

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