Falcon Entertainment, the studio’s parent company, was cited for lacking a filming permit, and was forced to shut down the production, Troy Prickett, the company’s director of promotion, confirmed to XBIZ late Wednesday.
“We were 85-90 percent done with the movie and an anonymous tip was phoned to [the LAPD’s vice squad], and we believe they were told that there was all kind of illicit activity going on, just to bolster the person’s agenda,” Prickett said.
Falcon suspects it was a tip because when police arrived, “they asked for the production by name, and asked for [director] Steve Cruz,” Prickett added.
In a post on his blog on Sept. 23, Cruz wrote that the production, “Blue Movie,” was his first as a director. The production was “an homage to 70s and 80s porn,” according to Prickett, and was later completed at Falcon’s San Francisco offices in three days.
“Everyone who was involved in the scene was coming up to the Folsom Street Fair,” Prickett told XBIZ. “The guys from the studio brought everything that we used [in Northridge] and recreated everything here in our offices.
“It’s actually funny that we got raided like old school porn did. It fit with the movie and we played it for what it was worth.”
Prickett said the studio was under assumption the Northridge location, which he declined to identify, had the necessary permits. Further, he said that when a shoot takes place at a private location, no permit was necessary in the first place.
“When we film for Falcon, we usually rent big, gorgeous mansions and houses and we film in different locations” and secure necessary permits, Prickett said.
The actions of one individual with an axe to grind are “dangerous for our industry,” Prickett said, adding, “it is a cautionary tale [because] this has drawn attention to every single studio filming today.”
