Steve Mallory sits with his wife, Teresa, on a sofa inside the doorway of his store in Ocean Beach and watches as six attractive young women emerge from the back of a long black limousine on Newport Avenue.
Each of the women is tall, beautiful and decidedly not dressed for modesty. They amble across the sidewalk toward the business next door, laughing raucously and chattering excitedly until a booming voice calls out “cut.” A mass of people descend upon the scene and begin rolling cameras back into position, adjusting lights and checking the microphones for the six actresses from the television show “Mythological X.”
Similar scenes have unfolded all over Ocean Beach during the last two weeks as a 20th Century Fox crew began recording the pilot episode for the new CBS show. “Mythological X” was created and written by Diane Ruggiero, one of the writers and producers of the “Veronica Mars” show,” which was also filmed in San Diego.
Sound mixer Trevor Black said the storyline revolves around a young woman living in OB. A fortuneteller tells her that she will either marry her prefect match within a year or never at all. The twist to the tale is that she has already met and broken up with the right man. The episodes will revolve around her quest to discover which one of her exes is Mr. Right.
Black and roughly 90 percent of the crew working in OB on this Friday night are San Diego locals and veterans of Stu Segall Productions. The TV shows “Silk Stockings,” “Renegade,” “18 Wheels of Justice” and “Veronica Mars” were all produced in San Diego at the production company’s studio on Ruffin Road in Kearney Mesa. The prospect of having a TV show based in OB is good news for Black and the 100-plus crew members working on Newport Avenue this particular evening.
Business owner Steve Mallory, on the other hand, is not so sure.
Outside Mallory’s furniture store on Newport Avenue, San Diego Police Department traffic officers are standing in the intersection, directing traffic around the film crew as it prepares for the next take.
“All the money ends up in permits that go directly to the city,” he said.
On a typical Friday, Mallory says he would expect to do a couple of thousand dollars in business. Tonight though, the production company is paying him to stay open and to rent the large parking lot attached to his building.
Mallory said the production crew has bought some furniture from him for props in the past, too. As a result, he admits, it’s not such a bad thing to have the production in town.
Rob Dunson is deputy commissioner of the San Diego Film Commission, a city-, county- and port-funded entity that works to attract film productions here. Dunson said that after the “Veronica Mars” show ended, there was little work left for the crewmembers around town and most of them had to look north to Los Angeles for work.
The permitting issue, however, strikes a nerve.
“San Diego does not charge for film permits,” he said.
According to Dunson, the only time that there may be a fee is if the film activities will incur a fee, such as when CalTrans has to shut down a freeway. When this happens, the production pays the cost incurred by whatever agency is involved, said Dunson.
Businesses along Newport Avenue seem to be operating as normal on this particular evening despite the fact that many of the parking spaces on the block have been taped off. If the pilot is successful and the show goes into full production, many of the locations will be re-created at the studios, minimizing future impact on OB, according to producers. They said there will still be times when a scene requires the beach or pier, and some local businesses were used as sets during the pilot.
Dunson said the producers kept the original names of the local businesses in the show and that it should prove to be a good promotional tool if the show becomes a hit. The spectacle of a film crew at work has brought plenty of foot traffic to the area on this evening. The sidewalks are lined with onlookers, straining to see if they can recognize any of the cast members.
One of the most recognizable faces on the set is a former OB resident ” director Tim Bushfield (“ThirtySomething,” “Field of Dreams,” “Stripes” and “Revenge of the Nerds”) lived on Narraganset Street while he was in the Navy.
Sitting behind a row of monitors just outside Mallory’s furniture store, Bushfield calls for the next take to begin and the set falls silent. Only time will tell what the overall effect on businesses in the area will be if the show goes into full production, but as a black limousine pulls back up to the curb, music blares from the Irish pub just a couple doors down, a sign along Newport Avenue that life in Ocean Beach seems largely unchanged by the presence of the production.
Steve Mallory watches the cast go through the scene again and is content to sit and watch the spectacle ” for this evening, anyway.