The Location Managers Guild International (LMGI) is the largest organization of Location Managers and Location Scouts in the motion picture, television, commercial and print production industries. Their membership plays a vital role in the creativ
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LMGI COMPASS | Spring 2023 • 33 LOCATIONS EVOKED FROM MEMORY In the film, Sammy talks excitedly about The Greatest Show on Earth as the family drives home from the movie theater. When they turn onto their street, Sammy notes that theirs is "the dark house with no lights" on a street filled with homes decorated with twinkling Christmas lights—one of the first instances in Spielberg's memory when he noticed that "being a Jewish family made us different from everyone else." Spielberg had also requested a T intersection so he could shoot the drive past a few houses with Christmas lights before the turn into the cul-de-sac. "We were going to need a lot of houses," Leann says. The house the Spielbergs had lived in at that time was a classic two-story nestled at the end of a cul-de- sac in Haddon Heights, New Jersey, and the production team would be recreating the neighborhood during the holidays—no easy feat when filming was set to begin in Los Angeles in July. Rick had shared a photo of the actual home, so Leann began by looking at location libraries and real estate sites like Redfin and Zillow. "I would use filters on the sites, for example, houses built between 1920 and whatever period we were in," she explains, "then select houses sold within the last five to seven years and then I'd click through all these places so I could find little pockets that had the right look. "And it had to be specific because it's all coming out of Steven's memory, so the side of the house the garage was on mattered. The placement of the windows mattered. A lot of things really mattered." Now that they had some possibilities, she and her team fanned out across L.A. searching for not only a location that could double the New Jersey house, but also the family homes in Arizona and California, a campsite, high school, beach, movie theater, camera shop, desert locations, and an office for a pivotal meeting between young Spielberg and the legendary John Ford. The iconic Orpheum Movie Theatre in downtown L.A., the Wilshire Ebell, an apartment in the mid-Wilshire area and the Universal backlot were among the L.A. locations chosen to assemble Spielberg's past as he remembered it. Other locations would be found in La Puente, Whittier, Los Olivos, Moorpark, Newhall and Zuma Beach. SCOUTING WITH SPIELBERG Leann whittled the options for the New Jersey house down to two streets in Chatsworth. Like a lot of elder statesmen directors, Spielberg had stopped going on scouts for his films years ago, but this time, either because of the subject matter or the fact that he'd been stuck at home on lockdown for a year, it was suggested he might join. "Rick said, 'He might go this time to see one or two of the houses, but probably not,' and I remembered that Photo by Peter Gluck/LMGI Dorsey High School, Los Angeles, stands in for Saratoga High School