Don't film here
Ex-communicate The Ex-List, and not just because it’s sure to be shitty
They’re making a TV show in my neighborhood. Whoopee.
It’s supposed to be a win-win situation when actual Main Street stands in for the back-lot in a movie about Main Street: Hollywood gets more realistic realism, along with bargain rates for sets and enthusiastic extras; Podunk gets cash and buzz, and maybe a little glitz rubs off on the toilet seats at the local hotel. “They’re shooting a movie!” Oh, how exciting. Let’s go down there and watch a two-hour set-up followed by 27 takes of “female lead enters coffee shop.”
In David Mamet’s 2000 film State & Main, a Hollywood film crew visits nothing but trouble upon the small Vermont town it invades. Mamet reveals the self-important snobbery and condescension of the entertainers but also the ass-kissing fame worshipping of the local yokels.
I may be a yokel, but as you’ve surely surmised, I’m not about to kiss the lipo-suctioned, spray-tanned ass of a TV show being shot in my neighborhood.
The Ex-List, starring Elizabeth Reaser and Alexandra Breckenridge, is produced by Fox Television Studios in conjunction with San Diego’s Stu Segall Productions and will debut on CBS in the fall. It’s based on the Israeli program Mythological X and is written by Diane Ruggiero, former writer and producer of another San Diego/Stu Segall venture, the three-seasons-then-cancelled UPN show Veronica Mars.
Before I go any further, let me remind you that Stu Segall Productions is perhaps the slimiest operation in town. Segall is known locally for being sued by former Marine Jesse Klingler over injuries suffered when Klingler was bound, gagged and shot at close range with blank ammunition during a simulated interrogation at one of Segall’s Strategic Operations military-training exercises. According to KGTV, “The jury found Stu Segall Productions… negligent in Klinger’s injury and found that negligence was a substantial factor in causing harm to the plaintiff.”
Segall is probably more widely known as porn director Godfrey Daniels, who worked with screen legends Marilyn Chambers and John Holmes, but should be even better known for his porn-empire business partnership in the 1970s with Michael “Mickey” Zaffarano, a capo in the Bonnano crime family who died of a heart attack trying to run away from the FBI when they tried to arrest him in 1979. Segall’s connections are documented in the 1986 U.S. Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography, which explains in a fascinating passage how in 1972:
“Peter Salanardi aka ‘Sonny Boy’ and Nicholas Musolino were observed in Los Angeles meeting with Michael Zaffarano. At the same time, Salanardi and Musolino were being sought for the murder of Carlo Lombardi in New York. Both the victim and the two suspects were involved in large scale heroin distribution in that city. While in Los Angeles, California, Salanardi and Musolino were guests at the homes of Stuart Segall and Theodore Gaswirth.”
But even worse than his “spicy past”—as the San Diego Union-Tribune characterized his years of executive service in the sleazy, mobbed-up porn industry in “Modest Mogul,” the paper’s puff-piece on Segall that ignores his mob ties while letting us know that he “built his empire through hard work and a savvy business sense”—are his string of “legit” productions at his San Diego studio: Renegade, Silk Stalkings, Hunter, 18 Wheels of Justice. What a load of crap.
And the latest? The premise of The Ex-List is predictably bad: A flower-shop owner learns from a psychic that she will be alone until she dies, unless, within one year, she manages to scrape up the mystery man of her dreams from the scrap heap of her ex-lovers. It’s a wacky supernatural dramedy about a woman embracing superstition and trying to complete herself with a man. Yuck.
To capitalize on the quirky authenticity of Ocean Beach, the show is being shot here—12 episodes—and the crew has become a fixture now, taking over the beach, the parking lots, the sidewalks, cluttering the tiny ’hood with their giant 18-wheeler trucks with generators running for hours, bathing the streets in artificial moonlight and prancing their nubile eye-candy in front of the million-dollar cameras in a grand spectacle that has about as much to do with O.B. as a nuclear power plant.
When the pilot was picked up in May, the San Diego Film Commission reported that, “This is great news! Ocean Beach will be one of the stars of the show.” Whoever wrote the Wikipedia entry was equally upbeat: “[The Ex-List will put] Ocean Beach squarely in the spotlight.”
But what if Ocean Beach doesn’t want to be the star of the show or in the spotlight? Ocean Beach has spent the last four decades trying to stay the hell out of the spotlight!
Look how quickly Pacific Beach became a magnet for shallowness starting in the mid-1990s when it hosted the X-Games and MTV Spring Break.
Without the San Diego River channel separating O.B. from P.B., the former probably would have been overrun by bros and rows of cookie-cutter fluorescent chain restaurants long ago.
After my recent column/letter asking Starbucks to close its near-universally unwanted location in O.B. went unheeded, it’s hard not to see how the very aspects of O.B. that give it its charm and uniqueness are the very factors that ironically compel fake-cool corporate entities like Starbucks and Fox, and unapologetically uncool ones like Segall’s studio, to storm the beach, capitalize on it and window-dress it with a little condescending “improvement,” consequences be damned.
So, no. We are not impressed with the cameras, lights, pretty actresses, the Fox empire rolling its 18 Wheels of Injustice into town for another lame Segall production, or any of it. Nonetheless, with a curse upon it, The Ex-List will probably fail, and O.B. can go comfortably back to being an isolated funky little beach town.
But in the unlikely event that it succeeds, wouldn’t it be awesome if they shot Season 2 in P.B.?
Write to dak@sdcitybeat.com and editor@sdcitybeat.com.
Published: 08/12/2008
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While you are welcome to have your opinion- I implore you to talk to those who are benefiting (financially) from The Ex-List being filmed in OB. A friend, who lives in the apartments where the lead character and her friends live in the show, gets a large chunk of her rent paid for by the studio- something that pleases her since she lives in OB- the community that prides itself on being "an isolated funky little beach town", but sure is overpriced.
Sir, you are and will always be half a man compared to Stu Segall.
Peacefire, do you actually think that having a movie based in pure fantasy publicizing OB as a squeaky clean fake beach paradise is going to help keep rents low here? The fact that your friend sold out to Hollywood for a few bucks doesn't do the other 14,000 of us any good. If they asked to film at my place, I'd tell them to jump off the pier.
As for me being half the man that Stu Segall is, Nelle: if you know how this guy made his money, and still think that he's a great man, I have only the deepest pity for you.
God forbid I should be that kind of man.
Regarding "Historymatters" comment.
Stu Segall started this tactical training project and it created a large group of devoted employees who worked for him unemployed for a long time.
This tactical training program is something more suited for the FBI or the our Armed Forces or the police & Sheriff dept.
It looks good in your eyes but the unemployed ones who losts homes, vehicles and loved ones suffered and Stu didn't care one bit.
I worked there for a long time and know what a crooked guy this really is.
I was one of the lucky ones who fled to LA and is now making a much better living in the film industry
These people who post these praising comments are the brainwashed in-mates that he hires to work there.
the sad part about it was we had to train in felons who got out of jail as some kind "help an inmate program" he looks good for doing it in the eyes of the public but the only real reason he does it is for the tax break.
This production company is the reason they have unions! the sad part about it is there is a sandiego union but its to weak to stand up to him.
He has skilled individuals getting payed $16.00 an hour which is the low budget union agreement, when they should be getting payed $22.00 an hour and if they were in LA they would get double that.
Its a great place for film school training.
Its too bad he's the only production company in sandiego other than the commercial companys who work seldomly.
Thanks for your sharing your experiences, Ex alumni. But I think you're mistaken about "historymatters." I don't think they were praising or even defending Segall's Strategic Ops.
The post stated that Segall had the same attorney as Blackwater. Doesn't sound like a compliment to me.
I think its great that somebody finally let the cat out of the bag on Segall's shady past... and shady present from the alumni!
This man has some pretty important people who back him and support him.
Alot of people who have worked there through out the years knew about his shady past and kept it secret and passed it around.
Make no mistake this invidual will sell you a rattle snake in a birthday cake with a smile on his face.
I have worked there and have met alot of great people who work on the shows who deserve much better but most of the employees have a desire to stay based in San Diego so they have to struggle and make due.
And it is disturbing to have to work along side a bunch of Stu's inmate employee program specialists, especially when they act as if they are still in cell block H and do not get along to well with the regular employees.
Stu Segall is a smart business man when it comes to making a buck but will pimp you out in a heartbeat to save more money.
I heard today through a recent employee that they were paid $14.00 per hour for a skilled technician to work on some of these shows.
Anyways I just wanted to send a shout out to Kolodenko!
Tell it like it is brother!
Thanks for your sub-genius insider commentary, BD.
I didn't put it in my column, but an ex gf of mine once worked for a production there & had a lousy experience.
too bad it's the only game in town for people who want to make movies and stay in Slow Death.
I think it speaks volumes that Stu Seagall and Blackwater have the same lawyer. There is a big relationship between SDPD the military, Blackwater and Seagall because they were using his sets for training. http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/...
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in 2001, Segall's studio experienced a slowdown, but he soon found a way to put the excess studio capacity to good use, said Kit Lavell, executive vice president of Segall's Strategic Operations Inc.