‘The Mule’ filming returns today

♦ The West Rome Bypass will be used for the film starring Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper.

Filming of “The Mule,” featuring Clint Eastwood and Bradley Cooper, will return to Rome this morning, a week after scenes were shot near Georgia Highlands College.

The filming is expected to start around 8 a.m. today on the West Rome Bypass, according to Atlanta-based Tammy Smith Casting. Rome is one of several Georgia cities being used for filming, with shoots already being done in Augusta and Decatur.

Some county and city police officers, utilizing a part-time job, are working as part of a crew for security and traffic control. The scheduling of the officers is being done by city police investigator Kyle York, who worked with the selective enforcement unit for 15 years.

York, who has worked with a number of other film and TV projects in Rome, said there will be intermittent traffic stops, lasting about four minutes, at the connector off U.S. 27 South for each shot. Traffic will be held during filming and then allowed to flow when a shot is over, he continued.

There will be a total of seven local police officers, a mix of members from the city and county departments who are off-duty, working traffic control and security around the film crew’s base camp, where the trucks are parked and equipment positioned.

York met with the assistant location director to organize a plan around the filming and help scout a spot which would satisfy what they were looking for.

Cooper and Michael Pena got some pointers from York on conducting a traffic stop, how to get the person out of the vehicle and handcuffing.

“I’m not complaining,” York said of landing the film gigs, adding he’s gotten the chance to speak with Eastwood a couple of times during filming in Rome.

The film draws from a New York Times Magazine feature run in 2014. The story details the journey of a desperate man in his 80s, seeking money to stave off the foreclosure of his business, finding himself in the position of a drug mule for a Mexican cartel. Earl Stone is being played by Eastwood.

With his drug loads

increasing, Stone becomes a focus of DEA agent Colin Bates while also avoiding enforcers for the Sinaloa cartel, which was headed by Joaquin Guzman — El Chapo.

Eastwood is directing the movie while also starring alongside Cooper, who played U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle in “American Sniper,” which the longtime actor directed. Other stars of “The Mule” include Laurence Fishburne, Pena and Dianne Wiest, as well as Alison Eastwood, Taissa Farmiga and Ignacio Serricchio.