73rd ANNUAL ACADEMY AWARDS
THE SUN
San Bernardino County's Newspaper
It's Oscar night, which means everybody wants to get in on the act. That includes those of us in the Hollywood hinterlands of San Bernardino County who shamelessly will claim local connections with two of this year's major contenders "Gladiator" and "Erin Brockovich."
I know, I know. Last year, we tried to latch onto the coattails of "The Insider" because one scene was shot in Fawnskin. We were desperate. This year though, we've landed much bigger parts than mere background scenery starting with animal trainer Randy Miller. Miller's company in Big Bear Lake, Predators In Action, not only provided two tigers to challenge Russell Crowe in "Gladiator", Miller also doubled for Crowe in all the attack scenes.
"This is right up our alley," said Miller. "My animals are trained for that type of work." Naturally, Miller is pulling for "Gladiator" to win best picture, Ridley Scott to win best director and, especially, Crowe to win best actor, since Miller feels a natural attachment to Crowe's role.
"It was a very intense part of the movie," he said of the tiger attacks. Miller said he and his cats, Shirkon and Tara, trained for a couple of months for the scenes at his animal compound. He spent the same amount of time in Malta, an archipelago nation in the Mediterranean Sea, with the "Gladiator" crew.
Miller said he also has taken his tigers, lions and bears to Asia, Africa and Australia and has worked on films with Richard Harris and Jean-Claude Van Damme. He recently completed a commercial for Gatorade, training a team of lions to "play" a football game.
But "Gladiator", he said, "was the best movie I ever worked on. The 12 (Academy Award) nominations speak for themselves. I also made some good friends out of it. I hope they bring home as many (Oscars) as they can." Working on an Oscar winning movie is not a bad entry on a resume, either. "Doesn't hurt," Miller said.
As for "Erin Brockovich," the background story has been well chronicled locally. There wouldn't have been a movie without the desert town of Hinkley or without the activism of resident Roberta Walker. You could even say the movie, which champions the legal battle of Hinkley residents against energy giant Pacific Gas & Electric, wouldn't have happened without the newspaper stories first written by The Sun in 1987.
It was six years later when Los Angeles lawyer Ed Masry and his assistant, Brockovich, got involved in the case and eventually won a $333 million settlement from PG&E. The movie has been a commercial and artistic success. Tonight it seeks five awards, including best picture, best director for Steven Soderbergh, best supporting actor for Albert Finney and best actress for Julia Roberts as Brockovich.
The desert didn't just provide the story, desert locations got parts in the movie. The Mojave was a recurring backdrop. A bar scene was shot at the Slash X Caf south of Barstow. Not everything made it into the movie. A scene shot at McCoy's Feed Store in Barstow got cut.
Of course, Hollywood liberties were taken with the story (Brockovich was actually more of an organizer and interviewer than someone who discovered the corporate wrongdoing) as well as the scenery. The lahontan district office of the California Water Quality Control Board isn't a rickety shack with boxes of files strewn about, but a modern office building in Victorville. If Brockovich really showed lots of cleavage in the office, as depicted in the movie, to gain access to information, it was all for fun. The files she looked at were public record.
The "Brockovich" crew also went off to Boron to shoot a stand-in for the real PG&E plant in Hinkley. The Boron plant was more accessible, for obvious reasons, but not necessarily more photogenic. But who's complaining? Not us.
It's a San Bernardino County story, especially in Hinkley where residents reportedly are geared up for the Oscar night like never before.
As Shari Davis of the Inland empire Film Commission put it, having a connection to the Oscars is part of what makes it fun. "All the supporters involved are really what makes the movies," she said.
Well, since she put it that way, how about a standing ovation for Miller, Shirkon, Tara and Hinkley?
Our own Hollywood version is that Roberts, Crowe and friends couldn't have done it without you.
