The Dallas two-step resumes
10/05/06 04:45 PM
By ED BARK
Yet another 11th hour development came at 10 p.m. earlier this week. That's when "the busiest woman in South Hollywood," a k a Dallas Film Commission director Janis Burklund, learned that the makers of a long-planned Dallas feature film want to reboot yet again. Now they'd prefer to shuck Louisiana and film the whole thing here in return for more "cheap or free" inducements.
"We've just got some more work to do to make it work for them," Burklund said in a telephone interview Thursday after talking to representatives of 20th Century Fox. "It's exhausting. We have to scrape. I have to constantly beg people for incentives. But we are Dallas. We have a look that's very hard to duplicate in Louisiana."
Production on the film, initially scheduled to start this month, has been pushed back to Feb. 5, Burklund said. And the shooting schedule has shrunk to 45 days, with John Travolta still the only confirmed star. He'd be J.R. Ewing, the role made famous by Larry Hagman more than a quarter-century ago.
Earlier this year, Burklund was told that the filmmakers would shoot roughly one-third of Dallas in Dallas, with tax incentive-rich Louisiana getting the bulk of the action. But now the game's on again, with Burklund and her thimble-sized staff scurrying to assure the film's bean-counters that Dallas can provide cheaper office space, more affordable location shoots and local crews that can go home at night rather than be fed dinner and put up in hotel rooms. Burklund figures she has a month before pre-production starts in mid-November.
"There are just all these little pieces to try to put this little jigsaw puzzle together," she said. "It's a shining example of why we need these state tax incentives. If we had them, we wouldn't be having these conversations with the film people. It would have been a given that Dallas would be made here."
Travolta's been cast for several months. But the movie's director and scriptwriters have changed, and the supporting cast remains up in the air. Shirley MacLaine and Luke Wilson supposedly are still negotiating to play Miss Ellie and Bobby Ewing, while Marcia Cross of Desperate Housewives is the latest actress rumored to be the new Pam Ewing.
Other reels are turning, too. Fox's Prison Break continues to shoot in North Texas while the show takes a three-week hiatus in deference to baseball's playoffs and World Series. And brief exterior shooting on the pilot for HBO's 12 Miles of Bad Road is scheduled for late October, with Lily Tomlin heading the cast as Dallas high-end realtor Amelia Shakespeare. Mary Kay Place is also in the mix in a dramedy created by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason and Harry Thomason of Designing Women fame.
Burklund said that Denzel Washington also was in Dallas recently to scout locations for Great Debaters, a period drama set at Wiley College in Marshall, TX. Shooting on the feature film tentatively is set for next spring, with Dallas, Marshall and Shreveport, LA each getting part of the action under Washington's direction.
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