Calamity Reigns ‘Dante’s Peak’ Hellbent On Action
When Nena Blackwell opened her laundermat Wednesday morning, disaster rained down.
Her back alley was filled with flames and smoke. An electrical transformer arced overhead. Bricks crashed to the ground.
Suddenly, a truck careened wildly down the alley, fleeing the mayhem.
Then it stopped - CUT! - and everything began all over again.
“I watched them do it for an hour, take after take after take,” said Blackwell, who saved a couple of the harmless foam “bricks” as souvenirs.
Universal Pictures is about halfway through the on-location filming for its $100 million volcano film, “Dante’s Peak.” Most of the shooting is being done in downtown Wallace.
Filming here should be a wrap by early August, when moviemakers will return to Los Angeles to film special effects scenes with miniatures and computer animation.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Caroline Rupp, co-owner of Fonk’s Variety Store. “I think it’s going to be quiet when they’re gone.”
A quick walk around downtown Wallace reveals several make-believe disasters.
A church steeple has toppled onto a school bus across the street from Wallace High School. Concrete rubble surrounds the wreck.
“Fake glass windows in the high school blew out, extras ran out, stunt men went through the glass. …God Almighty, they must’ve shot each scene 25 times,” said Wayne Grogg, a nearby resident who watched the filming. To create the illusion of tremors, workmen used hydraulic rams to rock fake trees and power poles.
Grogg, a night watchman at the Lucky Friday Mine, lived in Wallace in 1979, during shooting of Wallace’s other moment of fame - the pioneer film
“Heaven’s Gate.” Grogg, a fan of action films, thinks he’ll prefer watching “Dante’s Peak.”
“‘Heaven’s Gate’ just had a lot of dirt and horse manure in the streets,” he said.
A couple of blocks away, filmmakers recently sent stunt drivers and cars hurtling off a shattered fake freeway on-ramp. Rupp waited an hour and a half to watch that scene being filmed.
“I knew it wasn’t real, but it looked real,” she said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God!”’
Demolition crews have also partially collapsed a fake city hall nearby, and the streets are full of motorized lifts holding lights. Production assistants with radios scoot around town on mountain bikes. Heavy power cables are strung throughout alleys and streets.
The most dramatic change to Wallace is the occasional “ash fall,” when crews cover streets and businesses with inches of fluffy, fake volcanic ash.
“From a distance, it looks like it did when Mount St. Helens blew,” said Blackwell. The 1980 blast covered the city with 2 inches of gray powder.
Crews brush and vacuum the ash from streets and rooftops after filming. Since eruptions often obscure the sun, much of the filming is done at dusk, night or dawn.
The film - which has brought in a crew of about 200 people - has been great for some local businesses, especially hotels, motels, bars and restaurants.
“Everyone’s pretty enthused about it,” said resident Fred Bardelli, watching Wednesday evening as dozens of drivers set up for an evacuate-the-town scene. “Most movies are made in other places, like Los Angeles. We’re renowned for our mining - but not our moviemaking.”
Some business owners, however, say they’ve been badly hurt by the filming. They say the closed streets, tight parking and chaos have driven off customers during the summer tourist season. Several business owners have had to find new buildings after landlords sharply raised rents.
Joyce Frojen said business is so bad she’s trying to sell her shop, Silver Lining Antiques and Collectibles. The film moved the office of a local mine tour, upon whose tourists she relied for most of her business.
“I’ve been really hurt,” she said. “I was down $4,700 last month.”
Universal agreed to reimburse her for some of the difference, but she’s not satisfied.
“I finally settled with them really low. I was tired of fighting,” she said.
She’s angry that the Wallace City Council charged Universal only $20,000 for an entire summer’s disruption downtown.
“I feel the city council just sold us out for $20,000,” Frojen said. “Can you imagine? We should have had $200,000 at least.”
Alice Carrier, a mother of four, said she’s tired of road closures during filming.
“It causes a lot of havoc, slows things up,” she said. “I’ll be glad when it’s gone.”
Still, like many in Wallace, she’s curious about the finished product.
“I can’t wait to see the movie, to be honest,” she said.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
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