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The town in southwest Riverside County is trying to become a destination for Hollywood
Perris is trying to position itself as a place for movie and television shoots.
On Feb. 14, the city council agreed to form the Perris Film Incentive Program, which will promote the city within the entertainment industry.
The program, which was proposed by Councilwoman Tonya Burke, will be paid for by the city’s Community Economic Development Corporation, an entity that is responsible for, among other things, attracting and retaining businesses.
The corporation will pay a grant of up to $5,000 to any television or film production that totals at least $25,000. Also, if it’s to receive that money, the production must mention the film incentive program in its credits.
Perris is offering other enticements, including waving the base film permit fee, setting up a resource support service for all film crews and establishing an office that deals exclusively with film permitting and marketing.
The film incentive program will also establish a “virtual film office” online that will provide comprehensive information regarding filming and photo shoots.
By attracting film crews, Perris officials hope to create more economic activity within the city, including more hotel stays, vacation rentals and increased restaurant business, said Michael McDermott, the city’s redevelopment and economic development manager.
“As filming (and) photo shoots can take place over days, weeks and in some cases months, the economic impact can be substantial,” McDermott wrote in a staff report.
Perris, which incorporated in 1911 and has a population of roughly 73,000, does have several sites that would be ideal for certain movie backdrops: an 1892 Victorian-era train depot, the Southern Hotel, built in 1886, the 1910-era Bank of Perris and the Orange Empire Railway Museum, home to a large collection of railroad passenger cars, engines and vintage trolleys.
The city also boasts the art deco Perris Theatre, Skydive Perris at the Perris Valley Airport and Perris Auto Speedway.
Now, the task is to get the word out to the entertainment industry about those locations.
“There’s no question that Perris, and the Inland Empire in general, has been underused as a movie destination,” Burke said. “It’s true that a lot of movie and TV production is leaving California because it’s so expensive to do business here, but there’s still a lot going on, a lot of market out there.”
Perris does have some experience with movie production.
“Calendar Girl,” a coming-of-age film, was shot there in the early 1990s. Scenes from 1920’s -era “Changeling,” starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Clint Eastwood, were filmed at the railway museum, and parts of “The Bucket List,” starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, were filmed at Skydive Perris.
Some scenes from “Space Cowboys,” which Eastwood directed and starred in, were filmed in the Perris Valley.
What a municipality gains from a movie shoot, even a long one, is difficult to quantify, McDermott said.
“It’s very hard to put a number on it,” McDermott said. “I think getting movie and television shoots is more about marketing, about getting your city’s name out there. That’s the real value in it, and it’s something a lot more cities could be doing.”
The film incentive program will also begin working on establishing a first-rate soundstage in or nearby Perris, one that could accommodate virtually any indoor filming, said Rickerby Hinds, a professor of theater, film and digital production at UC Riverside.
“We need to do that, and I would like to see us set up a theater at some point,” said Hinds, who is helping Burke and other Perris officials establish the program. “We need to get more movie production in the Inland Empire. “Breaking Bad” was supposed to be set in Riverside [County] before it moved to New Mexico. We need to keep that kind of thing from happening again.”
