Moss Rock Preserve serves as movie set

A new movie featuring Richard Dreyfuss was filmed mostly in Hoover recently, though the famous actor himself never set foot in Alabama.

The movie, “Abandonment,” is about a woman who goes hiking in the Appalachian mountains and is abandoned in a cave by her companion after being attacked by a bear and breaking her leg, according to Ben Moon, one of the producers, who lives in Bluff Park.

Dreyfuss plays a 911 operator who tries to get the woman help as she seeks to find her way back to civilization.

The 74-year-old Dreyfuss, famous for movies such as “Jaws,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Mr. Holland’s Opus,” had all of his scenes filmed in San Diego because he doesn’t fly anymore, Moon said.

But 90 to 95% of the movie was filmed in Hoover at the 350-acre Moss Rock Preserve nature park, said Jen Miller Mishalanie, another Bluff Park resident who was the production designer and an actress in the film.

The film crew spent 11 to 12 days filming in Hoover and two days in California, she said.

About 100 people were involved in the show, from pre-production to post-production, and most were on site at one point or another, Mishalanie said. The most on site at any one time was probably about 40, she said.

The majority of the crew was from the Birmingham area except for the director, director of photography and script supervisor (who were from Los Angeles) and a couple of “background actors” (also known as extras) who were from the Huntsville area, Mishalanie said.

While most of the filming in Hoover took place in the nature park, the crew also filmed a flashback scene at Moss Rock Tacos & Tequila, another scene in a home in The Preserve and two scenes at Hoover City Hall.

One of the scenes at City Hall involved turning the William J. Billingsley Council Chambers into a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “war room,” and another that used the new community room across the lobby as a high school classroom.

It was Mishalanie’s job as production designer to make the spaces appear to be something they are not.

Hoover Councilmen Curt Posey and Mike Shaw and Melanie Posey-Joseph, the public information officer for the city of Hoover, were among the background actors in one of the scenes at City Hall.

The movie now is in post-production and will likely be shown at festivals to find a buyer to distribute it, Moon said. It usually takes at least a year to sell a show, and it likely will go straight into streaming instead of hitting the big screen, he said. Moon, who has lived in Hoover since 1997, has been working in the film industry in Alabama for 20 years, and Mishalanie, who has lived in Bluff Park about 20 years, has been helping him produce shows for about five years.

They handle a wide range of tasks, from lining up the film crew to finding sets, equipment and props, arranging lodging for out-of-town guests, providing food, handling accounting and payroll and applying for tax incentives from the state.

Producers from Los Angeles don’t know how to find the resources needed for filming in Alabama, Moon said. “We save them so much money.”

Moon and Mishalanie have helped produce a variety of films with big-name actors, including Bruce Willis (“Out of the Fight” and “Wrong Place”), John Travolta (“Trading Paint” and “Fanatic”), Nicholas Cage (“U.S.S. Indianapolis: Men of Courage), Steven Seagal (“The Perfect Weapon”), John Claude Van Damme (“Kill ’Em All” and “Blackwater”), Tyler Hoechlin and Julianne Hough (“Bigger”), and Dolph Lundgren (“Castle Falls”).

While one of the scenes in “Trading Paint” was filmed in Hoover at the former Golden Rule Bar-B-Q restaurant, this is the first time Moon and Mishalanie have filmed most of a movie in Hoover.

They would like to film more in Hoover because there are plenty of good hotels for out-of-town guests and a variety of good shooting locations, such as parks and mansions, Moon said. One thing Hoover is lacking is a “downtown” scene, but they can go to Bessemer or Birmingham for that, he said.

They recently were scouting locations for another film called “The Wizdor Hotel,” which is slated to include Bill Cobbs, Bill Smitrovich and Hal Linden.

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