'Ramona and Beezus' are taking over the neighborhood

'Ramona and Beezus' starring Joey King and Selena Gomez
opens in theaters throughout North America today.  (Movie
poster source: Wikipedia.)
 

‘Ramona and Beezus’ opens today in theaters across North America and may be coming to a neighborhood near you, but the title of this article actually refers to the film’s movie location.  Perhaps it should be changed to read “neighbourhood,” though, since ‘Ramona and Beezus’ was filmed in Vancouver, specifically in a lovely suburb known as Point Grey.

(Does anyone care to venture a guess how the film will fare in the Vancouver market?  While you ponder that easy question, you can check out the ‘Ramona and Beezus’ premiere photos in the slideshow below.)

The film’s screenplay, written by Laurie Craig and Nick Pustay, is based on Ramona Forever from Beverly Cleary’s popular “Ramona” series of children's novels.  Helmed by Elizabeth Allen, the movie stars 10-year-old Joey King and 18-year-old Disney sensation Selena Gomez, respectively, in the title roles.  (Ms. Gomez, who was 17 when the film premiered in New York City earlier this week, celebrated her birthday on July 22.)  John Corbett and Bridget Moynahan play the two sisters’ parents, Robert and Dorothy Quimby, and Ginnifer Goodwin, Josh Duhamel, Hutch Dano and Sandra Oh round out the cast with supporting roles.

The Point Grey home in which ‘Ramona and Beezus’ was filmed was built in 1926 and is presently owned by retired teacher Murray Thomson and his wife Shirley.  The Thomson family, which includes four children aged 18 and up, vacated their house for four months, which allowed for pre-construction, filming and then post-construction work to return the house to its original condition.  It was improved, actually, as Thomson offered in an interview with The Province newspaper, "We gained some nice stuff, a little deck out back and a window to the garden. They painted the house inside and out, they redid floors, sanded them.”

A film production typically rents a house to facilitate shooting exterior scenes, and then duplicates the look of the house on a sound stage for filming scenes that transpire inside.  Since ‘Ramona and Beezus’ involved several scenes that flowed from the interior to the exterior, however, the production team deemed it necessary to film in an honest-to-goodness home in a real-life neighborhood.  Location manager Neil Robertson said:

In this instance, they really wanted to have the connection.  A lot of the shots are through the window and out to the front yard, Ramona looking out to see her dad coming home. For those shots you can't do it any other way."

The Thomson’s neighbors’ home serves in the film as the Kemp residence, and the production rented a third house on the street for supporting needs (makeup and wardrobe) and compensated other homeowners on the street for the use of their driveways.

What do you think?  Would you like a film production to occur in your city or neighborhood?

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