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Hooray for San Diego: Author reveals local places where big movies were filmed

By David Moye

September 26, 2006

San Diego--San Diego will never have the film cache of Hollywood or even Bombay but it still has been home to many great scenes in movies both classic and fun.

That’s what author Harry Medved discovered while researching his new book, “Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer’s Guide To Exploring Southern California’s Great Outdoors” (St. Martin’s Griffin).

In fact, Medved, who co-authored the book with Bruce Akiyama, was surprised at just how many classic movies have been filmed locally.

That distinction is important because Medved is nothing if not an expert in bad films. He has co-authored five other books about bad movies, including “The 50 Worst Movies Of All Time,” “The Golden Turkey Awards,” “Son Of Golden Turkey Awards” and “The Hollywood Hall Shame.”

However, his new book is more of a travelogue that focuses on sites within a few hours drive of Hollywood and San Diego takes up four chapters in the book.

Some of the locales that are worth mentioning include the Children’s Pool in La Jolla. Considering the pool has become seal central the past few years, it’s ironic that it was the setting for important scenes in “Sammy The Way-Out Seal,” a 1962 Disney movie about two boys who adopt a seal and take it home.

But the Children’s Pool was also used to represent a World War I European battlefield in “The Stunt Man,” and Ellen DeGeneres and Bill Pullman take a romantic walk along it in “Mr. Wrong.”

Meanwhile, the gliderport at Torrey Pines Beach is where Chris Farley took a flying leap for a scene in the Christopher Guest comedy, “Almost Heroes.”

Balboa Park is also another San Diego landmark used by filmmakers. The park itself stood in for Charles Foster Kane’s gardens of Xanadu in Orson Welles’ 1941 classic “Citizen Kane” and Catherine Zeta-Jones filmed a scene at the Botanical Gardens.

On the other hand, if you want to get an idea of how seedy San Diego used to be, check out the 1979 George C. Scott film “Hardcore.” Many of the scenes that were supposed represent the dregs of Hollywood were filmed in San Diego prior to the revitalization of the Gaslamp District.

Qualcomm Stadium has been the site of at least one dubious scene in “Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes” where a bunch of locals dressed in wacky costumes try to destroy the killer vegetables by leading them to the stadium to hear a song called “Puberty Love” that was reportedly sung by current Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron.

The Hotel Del Coronado is probably San Diego’s most recognizable film icon. The hotel was featured prominently in the classic Marilyn Monroe comedy “Some Like It Hot” and “The Stunt Man,” but its most interesting film may have been a 1973 horror film called “Wicked, Wicked.”

The film was a split-screen epic that featured a serial killer on one half and his unsuspecting victims on the other half.

Anza Borrego has also been popular. The area called Font’s Point was used for a scene in the HBO mini series, “From The Earth To The Moon,” where a geologist teaches astronauts about the moon’s surface and it appeared as The Valley Of The Dead in “The Scorpion King.”

The area called The Texas Dip filled in for early Las Vegas in “Bugsy” and was used for battle sequences in the Marlon Brando-Dean Martin film, “The Young Lions.”

There’s one film Medved believes was made in San Diego that’s of historical importance but he can’t pin it down. He believes a silent film called “Count Of Monte Christo” was filmed in La Jolla, and could be the first film shot in California.

But, he says, that’s for a future edition of the book.

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