Orlando Looking Good As 'Ernest' Hits Screens (11/11/1988)

November 11, 1988|By Moira Bailey of The Sentinel Staff

Orlando -- you're a star, babe.

The City Beautiful is the main location for Ernest Saves Christmas, the latest big-screen adventure of Ernest P. Worrell. The comedy opens today in Orlando and in movie theaters across the country.

The $6 million Touchstone Pictures presentation features Orlando as the city where the putty-faced Ernest (Jim Varney) lives and drives a taxi. He links up with an aging Santa Claus, ready to retire, who has traveled to Orlando to find a successor.

Orlando audiences will recognize a number of familiar places, including Orange Avenue downtown, the international airport, train station and science center. They also will recognize a host of Orlando faces -- the hometown actors who are the supporting cast.

City film officials, revved up by the recent arrivals of major movie studios in Central Florida, say the Ernest movie will prove Orlando's merits as a big-screen location. In dollar terms, Ernest is no joke. The first Ernest movie, Ernest Goes to Camp, was lambasted by critics but was a huge commercial success.

The new Ernest movie wastes no time in plugging Orlando. In the first few minutes the word Orlando is flashed on the screen as a plane lands. Orlando actor Jack Swanson, playing a businessman, arrives with Santa Claus at an Eastern Airlines gate. ''First time in Orlando?'' Swanson asks. The actor playing Santa replies that he tries to fly in at least once a year.

A few scenes later, Santa catches a ride from the airport in Ernest's cab. The pair begin their wild ride to find Santa's replacement, who works at the Orlando Children's Museum (convincingly played by the Orlando Science Center). The movie provides non-Orlandoans with a rare glimpse of Orlando beyond Disney World. There's not a mouse in sight, although filmmakers used the Disney-MGM Studios and the nearby Epcot Center drive, which doubles in the movie as Orlando's highway system.

Through the windows of Ernest's truck audiences get glimpses of Barnett Plaza, Orange Avenue storefronts and the colorful murals in front of the Sun Bank Center, which then was being built.

During an early scene in which a girl is chased out of a Pine Street restaurant, The Deli Downtown gets a prominent visual plug.

''I just bought this a couple months ago,'' said owner Richard Pesch. ''The prior owners told me this place would be in the movie. That makes me happy. The advertising in there should help my business.''

Ernest's ''house'' is on North Hyer Avenue, near Howard Middle School. Florida National Bank appears as a movie studio headquarters. The Municipal Justice Building provides a jail. The Lake Mary television studios of WOFL- Channel 35 are cast as movie studios. Orlando's illuminated skyline makes a glittering aerial appearance.

The film's characters make plenty of references to Orlando's balmy climate, although the city's lakes and natural beauty are given only bit parts.

Orlando and its locations won out over several other cities under consideration, including Atlanta, Miami, New York and Dallas, said Cathy Savino, director of the motion picture and television office at the Industrial Development Commission of Mid-Florida Inc.

''You figure Ernest would live here.''

Orlando not only made sense for Ernest; it made sense for the bottom line. The film cost $6 million, Savino said, one-third of what it would have cost in Los Angeles. (One of the film's executive producers is UCF graduate Joseph Akerman Jr., whose hometown is Orlando.)

Although the film credits Nashville with some locations, at least 80 percent of the movie was shot in Orlando from late March through early May.

Only Orlandoans will be able to detect the subtle incongruities in the movie's various locations.

-- They will note that the route Ernest uses to and from the airport really goes to and from Epcot.

-- They will realize that it takes more than a few seconds to run from the train station on Sligh Boulevard to the science center in Loch Haven Park, as one film character manages to do. The distance is actually five miles.

-- They will know there is no immigration counter, with officials stamping passports, in the baggage claim area at the airport. The real immigration counter is in a different part of the building.

And there are special pleasures for Central Florida viewers, such as the ''Apopka Snake Farm'' sign painted on the truck Ernest drives.

''It was a great experience. It was interesting to get the other side of a movie,'' said Wendy Sering, spokeswoman for the Orlando Science Center. The crew filmed there, mostly at night, for about a month and made it ''snow'' at the science center for the movie's big finale.

The cast includes Orlando actress and Tropical Theatre co-founder Miriam P. Saunders and legendary rock 'n' roll lyricist Jesse Stone. Saunders appears briefly as a receptionist. Stone appears in a bus stop scene with Santa.

David Grant, a 25-year-old Daytona Beach native who recently graduated from UCF with a film degree, signed on as a production assistant and worked from start to finish on the film. He earned a credit as an apprentice editor.

''This is like the first major feature coming out of Orlando,'' Grant said. ''It's not going to win any Oscars, but it's a fun movie.''

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/1988-11-11/news/0080210241_1_ernest-movie-orlando-science-center-time-in-orlando