COLLECTOR CLASSICS
Business turns cars into stars
Smokey the guard cat has a lot to look after. There is the coming and going of 80 police cars, about a dozen police motorcycles, numerous ambulances of all types and ages, paddy wagons and buses along with various cars and trucks from many eras.
Visitors need to be checked out by Smokey and escorted through the two cavernous warehouses in an industrial area of New Westminster filled with 200 vehicles — many of them stacked on rows of electric hoists.
Smokey ensures there is no rodent problem in the compound where he showed up as a feral cat three years ago. He gradually integrated himself into Ian Thompson’s 911 Filmcars operation.
On this day, Smokey is perched on the hood of a 1956 Chevrolet sedan that has just come back from a starring role in a film production. Last year was a record for Thompson and his small crew of film vehicle suppliers with some productions taking dozens of emergency vehicles. There are feature films, TV series, movies of the week, music videos and commercials.
“Some people don’t consider commercials a big part of the industry, but there a lot of them shot in Vancouver as full blown productions with big budgets,” Thompson says.
The many transit buses Thompson has bought from Calgary, Seattle, Olympia, Wash., and as far away as Orlando, Fla. are some of the big earners. One of the oldest buses was dressed up as a tour bus used for the 1964 New York World Fair for the film Tomorrowland, which saw an area of the University of British Columbia turned into the world’s fair.
Thompson also has a fleet of modern 24-passenger buses that he rents to productions as crew carriers. It’s a lucrative business when there are many films in production. He even has a replica San Francisco cable car — motorized and on wheels.
“If you put a camera on that on a drive by and don’t show the road, the viewer’s brain says they’re in San Francisco,” he says
The two huge Freightliner ambulances he bought in the eastern U.S. are rented on a fairly regular basis. Thompson loves dealing with Americans.
“They cycle through emergency equipment every 10 to 15 years and, when I went to drive the two ambulances back, the county commissioner met me at the airport and drove me to the fire hall,” he says. “If it wasn’t for the fire trucks that we have, producers would have a difficult time cutting through the red tape trying to rent from a fire department because they don’t have extra fire trucks hanging around. We make it easy for filmmakers to access this equipment in a heartbeat.”
What he is really looking for is the newest fire trucks available at the cheapest price.
Mike Ball and Matt Nicholls are busy taking the decals off a huge fire truck just acquired as surplus. Nearby is a Spartan 100foot ladder truck brought from the southern U.S.
Thompson has a long history with trucks. As an 18-year-old, he purchased his own highway tractor because he was too young to get a job driving. He then hired an experienced driver to teach him the ropes over a six-week period. He hauled produce from California and other goods all over North America for many years.
One day while approaching the B.C. border on a trip back from Seattle, he pulled alongside a tour bus being driven by an old friend. They got to talking at the border and soon Thompson was a bus driver for Charter Bus Lines of B.C., driving tours all over North America.
Destinations included Alaska, New Orleans, San Diego, and Reno, Las Vegas. “I was often gone for a month at a time dropping one load of tourists off at a distant location and picking up a new group that had just flown in for the return trip,” he recalls.
He had worked in every capacity for Charter Bus Lines of B.C. including driver trainer and dispatcher when a friend told him about the great money he was making driving in the film industry. That seemed appealing and soon Thompson was fully involved in the film industry as a member of Teamsters Local 155, which represents all drivers.
Many drivers owned trucks that they rented to the movies. But Thompson decided to go in a different direction after seeing a used ambulance parked beside the road with a for sale sign on it.
When his quest for film work was ignored, he bought a second ambulance and then a third. Suddenly, the phone was ringing and 911 Filmcars Inc. was born.
“It just grew and grew,” he says of the 20-year journey of acquiring rolling stock as picture vehicles for the film industry.
He has so many police cars that he can change colours by switching doors, hoods and trunks. And many of the rigs he rents out are badged to fit the needs of productions that include forces such as the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) or NYFD (New York Fire Department) in their scripts.
The operation includes a vinyl department run by Ross Lempri- ere, who can magically redecorate vehicles with badging to suit and even change the colour of a vehicle with vinyl wrapping.
Thompson had left the provision of police cars to another picture car company until receiving a call that the company was for sale with approximately 20 cars. Now he has a complete fleet of Ford Crown Victoria and Taurus police cars along with numerous Dodge Chargers.
His row of police motorcycles includes Harley-Davidsons, BMW RT 1200s, Kawasaki KZ 1000s and even a pair of vintage Second World War motorcycles with sidecars.
The collection also houses some special vehicles used as picture cars. They include a 1926 Ford Model T touring car, a 1934 Ford sedan and a 1950 Chevrolet.
“They want things in a hurry and it’s usually the vehicles that are the furthest back in the warehouse,” Thompson muses. “The producers almost always require lots of changes as well.
“It’s an interesting business with a new challenge almost every day.”