THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, February 6, 1997 TAG: 9702060029
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 58 lines
THE PLOT of ``The Shadow Conspiracy,'' even though it's supposedly about an attempted overthrow of the U.S. government, doesn't give you much to chew on while you're in the theater. If your mind wanders, though, there is something to do other than munch down on the popcorn.
Try spotting the Richmond locations.
Richmond has often been used as a substitute for Washington, D.C., in movies, primarily because the architecture is similar. ``The Shadow Conspiracy'' is weak on plot but its creators are nonetheless ingenious in the way they hide Richmond.
With the help of the Disney studio, here are a few clues to spotting Virginia's capital in ``The Shadow Conspiracy.''
Richmond's historic Fan District and Shockoe Slip doubled for Georgetown. The James River stood in for the Potomac. Some of those canals, which look just like the Foggy Bottom section of Washington, are actually Richmond.
The defunct Lucky Strike building, a part of Richmond's Tobacco Row, is used in a sequence were Charlie Sheen is chased by the villain.
Craigie Inc., a working stock exchange in downtown Richmond, stands in for the fictitious newspaper building of The Washington Herald.
Impossible to spot are many interior scenes filmed on sound stages in Richmond at Figgie International, a Colonial-style complex of buildings that served as the movie's main sound stages. The corporation produces overhead sprinklers but had moved back to Ohio, leaving the building vacant.
At that complex, production designer Joe Alves created the interior of the White House, including the Oval Office. The set was a painstaking re-creation, but the filmmakers admit they took liberties with the interior decoration.
In the film's final credits, there is a special thanks to Gov. George Allen. The governor went out of town one weekend to allow the moviemakers to film in the private quarters of the Virginia governor's mansion, which represented the White House private quarters in the film.
A tunnel linking the mansion to the State Capitol next door was used for a chase in the film. Terry Collis, producer of the film, said: ``We were very lucky. We found a facility that has all of the set, corridors and tunnels we needed for the White House. Instead of having to go on a stage and build them, we found them in Richmond.''
Historic Virginia House, now a museum, stood in for Duncan's Tavern, the movie restaurant where Donald Sutherland and Sheen meet. Virginia House was built as a priory in England during the 12th century and brought to the United States and reassembled in 1928 by a wealthy Richmond couple. The film used only the exterior of the building.
In one scene, Sheen hangs from a window-washing platform. The scene was shot at the Omni Hotel in downtown Richmond. The filmmakers informed paying guests of the shooting, which took place at 3 a.m. Shots rang out from the roof of the building, and Sheen's double was hanging off the side of the hotel 15 stories high. Producer Collis said it was surprising that not one light was turned on in the hotel after the shots were fired.
To mask the locale, most public monuments in Washington were used. The film, while a dud in the plotting category, is quite clever in the way it fools the eye.
It works.