BY NANCY MILLS
HOW DID The Fate of the Furious become
the first Hollywood studio film to shoot in
Cuba? Via relentless planning by a
Hollywood force that most filmgoers never
hear about: location managers. These crew
members don’t yet have their own Oscar
category, but they are the pros who find the
places where movies and TV shows shoot,
get permission to film there and clean up
after it’s all done.
The Fate of the Furious, which deals
with blackmail, nuclear codes, terrorism,
extravagant stunts and, of course, cars,
spent ;; days in Cuba in ;;;;, mostly shooting a spectacular car race that kicks off the
movie. Why Cuba? That’s where Dominic
(Vin Diesel) and Letty (Michelle Rodriguez)
are honeymooning. Naturally, Dom can’t
resist a challenge from a local racer, and off
they go.
Before the cast arrived in Havana, the
location team, spearheaded by members of
the Location Managers Guild International,
spent nearly six months preparing.
Hundreds of people had to be consulted,
from U.S. State Department officials and
the Cuban government to Cuban president
Raúl Castro.
Cuban unit location manager Matt
Prisk, a Costco member, says, “You can’t
come in and do anything you want.”
Supervising location manager Eric
Hooge adds, “We were told we couldn’t bring
an American helicopter into Cuban airspace
or use drones. We suggested, ‘Put one of your
Air Force people in the helicopter. That way
you can monitor us.’ They finally agreed.”
Hooge recalls the helicopter’s first offi-
cial appearance. “We locked up the road,
and in came a very sophisticated camera
ship, flying low over the capitol building,”
he says. “The Cubans had never seen any-
thing like it. They were crying and cheering.”
Flexibility was key to getting things
done in Cuba. The team’s initial pre-shoot-
ing reconnaissance showed that anything
the production needed would have to be
brought into the country.
“You can’t just go down to the corner
store and get paper clips,” Hooge says. “We
got a cargo ship, and we had to build the
manifests for the Cubans so they would
know what we were bringing, and for the
U.S. government so they’d know what we
were sending. Everything we brought, we
had to bring back.
“When that ship docked, it was like
storming the beaches of Normandy. We had
every giant truck you can imagine stuffed
with equipment.”
Not to mention toilet paper. “That’s one
thing I remembered from our initial scouting
experience,” Hooge says. “At a restroom, you
sit down and—oops—there’s no toilet paper.
You look up on the shelf, and there’s a maga-
zine with pages torn out of it. We brought
pallets of toilet paper, but it would disappear.
We had to hire people to stand outside the
bathrooms and break off pieces for people.
“The Cubans have a hard time getting
the simplest things. If your house is blue
and you need blue paint, they might not
have it, so you take red because that’s
what’s there.”
As a result, Havana is very pic-
turesque. “We saw wonderful col-
ors on crumbling buildings,” Hooge
says. “It’s hard for the people to get
anything fixed. Some have no run-
ning water, so they keep refilling
water tanks on the roof. Sometimes
there are no elevators.”
Cubans were excited to have
The Fate of the Furious in town,
especially because of their love of
classic American cars. Many of the
background vehicles in the film resulted
from a car casting call. Entire families
would arrive in the cars to show them off.
And when technology didn’t work? “You
had to adapt,” says key assistant location
manager Alex Oyarbide, a Costco member.
“It was a completely different pace in Cuba.
It wasn’t fast and furious.”
Working there had a major impact on
Oyarbide, who was born in the U.S. one
month after his mother fled Cuba. “I had my
first contact with my sister from my dad’s
side while we were shooting,” he says. “I’d
seen her on Facebook, and
we’d talked on the phone. It
was quite an emotional expe-
rience.” C
Nancy Mills is a Los Angeles–
based journalist who writes
about ;lm and television.
ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT
Road rage
The Fate of the Furious goes to Cuba
THECOSTCOCONNECTION
The Fate of the Furious (Item #1170020) is
available in BD/DVD/Digital HD, 7/11.
Top: The starting line on Galiano Street in
front of Parque El Curita. Middle: Cuban unit
location manager Matt Prisk preps a Havana
street for a motorcycle racing scene. Bottom:
Charlize Theron and Vin Diesel.
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OUR DIGITAL EDITIONS
Click here to watch the trailer and clips
from The Fate of the Furious. (See page
8 for details.)
