Movie fans who take the $250 “VIP Tour’’ on the Warner Bros. lot on Thursdays often get to have lunch with Cass Warner, granddaughter of the eldest of the four founding brothers (and the daughter of Milton Sperling, the independent writer-producer who also operated out his father-in-law’s lot). That’s because a few hours before the opening of the TCM Classic Film Festival, I was sharing a delicious meal in the commissary today with the charming Cass, who has the imposing title of historical outreach coordinator for the studio’s tour increasingly lucrative tour department.
Cass is also a documentary filmmaker and producer, who I reported last fall is trying to turn a treatment for a “Casablanca’’ sequel by one of the original authors, Howard Koch, into a movie. She has also been developing a script for a feature version of her wonderful feature doc “The Brothers Warners’’ with screenwriter Nicholas Pileggi.
After lunch, Cass invited me on a very personal mini-tour of the enormous lot (though our very knowledgable driver, Victor Pasnakian, told us tour vans are not allowed near Clint Eastwood’s office or the building housing the vaults where negatives and prints are stored). The Western village where Cass used to watch her idol Clint Walker shooting the TV series “Cheyenne’’ was replaced a few years ago by “Warner Village,’’ a faux cul-de-sac of suburban houses used by TV series (and occasionally features) that actually house production houses inside.
But aside from some newer buildings, including a museum and an imposing theater, the lot is much like the one I last visited in the 1980s, when it was known as the Burbank studio and co-inhabited by Columbia Pictures. (After Sony bought Columbia, they bought the old MGM lot, which Warner Bros. had acquired along with Lorimar Pictures). For some reason that I forgot, I was there to watch Jon Cryer and Demi Moore shoot “No Small Affair,’’ but there wasn’t much other activity, though I did see James Brolin working on an outdoor scene for the TV series “Hotel.’’
These days the Warner lot is humming with activity, most of it on the television end. Conan O’Brien and Ellen DeGeneris’ talk shows both tape there, along with a raft of sitcoms and dramatic shows. But the studio takes its glorious history very seriously, and lots of buildings — many of them false fronts — from classic movies like “King’s Row,’’ “Casablanca,’’ “The Public Enemy’’ and “The Music Man’’ — are still standing, and redressed to suit the needs of whatever happens to be shooting. And all of the sound stages bear plaques with the names of famous movies and TV shows that were filmed within their walls. Just look at the list for Stage 25, just one stop on my mini-tour.