Making a movie is never a simple endeavor. The path from script to screen is invariably plagued by infinite complications, obstacles, challenges and bumps in the road, with directors, producers and studio heads facing endless problems and complicated decisions each and every day of production. Though many behind-the-scenes dealings may seem trivial to the uninitiated (the color of a costume, placing a set piece here or there, rewriting a throwaway line), when added together, the minutiae can add up to magic onscreen. Art is all in the details, as they say.
Those who want a front-row seat to the process should look no further than “The Offer,” Paramount Plus’ recent limited series chronicling the extensive trials and tribulations that rookie producer Albert S. Ruddy (Miles Teller), Paramount Pictures chief Robert Evans (Matthew Goode) and novice director Francis Ford Coppola (Dan Fogler) experienced in delivering one of the most celebrated films of all time to the screen, the 1972 classic “The Godfather.” As the show’s executive producer Russell Rothberg recounted in a behind-the-scenes featurette, “The story of Al Ruddy trying to get this movie made and what he and Coppola and everybody went through to get it made is just astounding!”
Filming “The Offer” was quite an ambitious undertaking, as well, especially when it came to the series’ locations, with production designer Laurence Bennett and his team utilizing over 175 different spots to bring the 1960s/1970s-era true story authentically to life. Set in such far-flung places as Texas, New York, California, Mexico and Sicily, the show was shot in its entirety in Los Angeles and its environs. Though the Paramount Pictures lot in Hollywood played front and center to most of the action, a different production facility was also notably featured. Los Angeles Center Studios, located on the northwest edge of downtown L.A. at 450 S. Bixel St., regularly popped up as Gulf + Western’s New York headquarters, the supposed Columbus Circle office building where Austrian-born business titan Charlie Bluhdorn (Burn Gorman) reigned supreme with his acerbic tongue and brash wit.
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Image Credit: LoopNet The 20-acre state-of-the-art facility began life as Union Oil Center, the Los Angeles home base of the Union Oil Company of California. As originally designed by architects William Pereira and Charles Luckman in 1958, the International-style campus consisted of four structures – a sprawling 12-story hexagonal-shaped tower known as the Home Office Building, a similarly-shaped two-level cafeteria/auditorium and two smaller four-story wings, all anchored by a dazzling set of space-age pedestrian sky bridges.
Standing at 165 feet, the Home Office Building became the highest structure in all of Los Angeles upon its completion, thanks to both its elevated plot and a moratorium that was overturned two years prior that had long capped the height of all city buildings at 150 feet.
Erected by the Del E. Webb Construction Co. at a cost of $20 million, no expense was spared in the complex’s composition. According to a Los Angeles Times article from 1958, Union Oil shelled out a whopping $1,477,000 for the air conditioning alone!
The exquisite interiors, which include a black granite lobby, 12th-floor executive offices and a 10th-level bullpen/conference space, were fashioned by Weber Showcase & Fixture Co., Standard Cabinet Works and Venetian Terrazzo and Mosaic Co. The main tower’s unusual shape allowed for views from nearly every vantage point, with a “grid of thin aluminum louvers” covering the main façades and “protecting the offices within from the sun,” as detailed on the Los Angeles Center Studios website.
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Image Credit: LoopNet In a spectacular example of adaptive reuse, when Union Oil moved out in 1996, the complex, then known as Unocal Center, was transformed into a movie studio via a joint venture carried out by the Smith, Hricik and Munselle development team, the Bristol Group investment firm and Hollywood Location Co. production management. Following a major $40 million rehab project during which six 18,000-square-foot soundstages and 15 acres of land were added to the premises, Los Angeles Center Studios opened its doors to the film world in July 1999.
The enterprise quickly proved ingenious. Though the Los Angeles Times seemed doubtful early on, reporting, “A group of downtown developers is trying to achieve what many real estate professionals consider near impossible: putting downtown Los Angeles on the map of the entertainment industry,” L.A. Center Studios managed to do just that! Seeing that 14,000 shoots had taken place “within a two-mile radius of the new soundstages” the year prior, the facility certainly had an ace in the hole, not to mention a built-in captive audience.
And it is still going strong today, providing a home base to the countless productions that film on the streets of downtown Los Angeles each and every day. Along with the aforementioned soundstages, the expansive complex currently offers absolutely everything a film crew could possibly need (and then some!), including three close-off streets, ample parking, a 350-seat theater, 450,000 square feet of both short and long-term Class A office space, a park, a fitness center, a spa, a dry cleaner, an espresso bar and a commissary.
And at the forefront of it all is the Home Office Building, which the studio developers had the foresight to leave intact in all of its midcentury glory, thereby creating a “vertical backlot,” complete with a gleaming lobby, elevators, subterranean parking, office space and multiple conference rooms, all primed and available for filming.
The tower and its distinctive sky bridges have appeared in countless big and small-screen productions, most frequently popping up as a government facility. Moviegoers will likely recognize the structure as the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. from “Live Free or Die Hard” or as the Dallas FBI offices from the 1998 “The X-Files” movie. And television fans probably know it as the Los Angeles FBI field office where Don Eppes (Rob Morrow) reported to work each day on “Numb3rs” or as the Central Division of the Philadelphia Police Department where Lilly Rush (Kathryn Morris) and her team solved old murders on “Cold Case.”
It is the building’s interior that will be most familiar to “The Offer” viewers, though.
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Image Credit: Los Angeles Center Studios For the production, cast and crew took over the structure’s bullpen/conference area, a massive open space resplendent in midcentury detailing situated on the 10th floor, and transformed it into the Gulf + Western offices. Ruddy, Evans and Coppola visit the wood-paneled site countless times throughout the series on their journey to bring “The Godfather” from script to screen, with Bluhdorn nearly thwarting their every move.
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Image Credit: Los Angeles Center Studios Due to environmental restrictions and the tower’s historical nature, Bennett and his team were only allowed to make minor alterations to the space for the shoot. But they managed to work their magic all the same, populating the chamber with vintage seating and desks, a reception area and decorative screens that served to break up the room. In a truly inspired move, Bennett fashioned the screens’ cutouts to mimic the hexagonal shape of the building (as can be seen in the screen capture above)! Art is all in the details, indeed!
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Image Credit: Paramount The tower’s main lobby and front entrance were also utilized briefly on the series, in the episode titled “A Stand Up Guy.”
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Image Credit: Amazon Studios And the bullpen space regularly appeared as the offices of Robert ‘Bobo’ Boston (Andre Royo) on the Amazon drama “Hand of God.”
Along with filming, Los Angeles Center Studios also leases space out for special events. So if you’re looking to party like Charlie Bluhdorn (or, more preferably, Bob Evans), the opportunity is there!