OMG, did u hearz this?!11 Dumb Drum caught up recently with Fresno’s film commissioner Ray Arthur, who gave us some details regarding the Fresno connection to one of this summer’s biggest blockbusters, Iron Man 2.
Dumb Drum: So we heard it through the grape vine… (Get it? Fresno, ag, grapes, raisins, har?) … that Fresno was somehow involved in Iron Man 2. True? What’s the story?
Ray Arthur: Either through IMDb or Production Weekly I had received a listing for “Iron Man 2” that listed my friend Scott Allen Logan as Location Manager. I contacted Scott in late December ’08 to propose City Hall and other locations to him for IM2. I forwarded a few photos of City Hall to Scott and we kept in touch for several weeks. Location Scout Scott Trimble came to Fresno on Friday evening, March 13, 2009, to shoot City Hall for IM2. On March 16, I received a non-disclosure form from “Rustic Films,” the fake company that Jon Favreau was using to keep IM2 locations secreted. Iron Man, Rustic … get it? I had worked with both Scotts before on previous projects.
Ray goes on to tell us that no specific scene shooting was ever planned for Fresno City Hall, that it would simply be plate shots for visual effects. But no additional photography occurred past March 13. Principal photography for IM2 began three weeks later on April 6, 2009. While we can confirm that Fresno wasn’t featured in the final movie, Ray tells us there’s no ruling out that Scott Trimble’s location photography may have been used as basis for some of the futuristic architecture in the “Stark Expo” sequences. Either way, pretty neat! Now let’s start the “Fresno for The Avengers” campaign right now! C’mon Joss Whedon!