PORT ANGELES — Moviegoers spend millions of dollars to watch the work of highly-paid actors. However, most don’t get to watch the work of all the anonymous people involved in a major movie production.
Film crews for Paramount Pictures’ “The Hunted,” starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro, began setting up a movie set on the Lower Elwha Road in late December.
As shooting time nears, crews are preparing to close the road on Tuesday for the rest of the month. Filming is expected to begin on Wednesday. The film’s release date is October.
Pam and Kent Arney, owners of Arney’s Dam RV Park, have been watching the crews ever since, and they are amazed at what moviegoers don’t see.
“These people work hard,” Pam Arney said, adding that most people don’t know what goes on behind the scenes of a movie or how much work goes into it.
When the film crew began building a foam rubber rock ledge for the film’s final scene, they asked to use the Arney’s’ garage and wood stove for three days to dry the rocks.
“Our garage was full of foam rubber rocks for three days,” Arney said.
New crew members are coming and going every day, but there are usually at least 30 people working on the set on any given day. Pam and her husband talk with them daily.
“They are real great, down-to-earth people,” she said.
The movie is in set in Portland and most of the scenes were shot in Oregon. When the filming was delayed by an injury to actor Del Toro, the final scene location in Oregon was washed away by heavy rains.
Del Toro suffered a broken wrist during an action scene.
The rest of this story appears in today’s Peninsula Daily News. Click on “Subscribe” to get the PDN delivered to your home or office.