SOMETHING'S STRANGE IN SUBURBIA

By Hal Lipper

From The St. Petersburg Times, 05.22.1990, City Edition

This is how you sneak onto the set of Edward Scissorhands to watch Johnny Depp, Winona Ryder and Anthony Michael Hall film a fractured fairy tale about a Pinocchio-like man with metal shears for fingers.

First, you borrow an imposing European car. A Saab will do. You need it to buffalo your way into Saddlebrook Resort and Conference Center, where the movie's production office is located.

Next, you cruise around Carpenters Run, the residential subdivision where Ryder, Dianne Wiest and Alan Arkin are supposed to live. Wiest and Arkin play Ryder's parents. Hall is her boyfriend.

You can't miss Carpenters Run. The houses are painted mustard, lime, coral and Smurf blue. Their eaves twinkle with Christmas lights. Their front yards are adorned with artificial bushes pruned in the shapes of dinosaurs, dachshunds and ballerinas.

Rent-a-cops patrol Carpenters Run, and there are signs posted "RESTRICTED ACCESS Residents and Authorized Crew Members Only " You must be discreet when casing the neighborhood.

Park your car. Carry some papers to look official. Now, chat with the neighbors.

Randy Blummer is walking his cocker spaniel, Hershey, past the topiaries on his property. The boxwood is clipped to resemble a giraffe, two ostriches and three baby chicks. Hershey begins to water them.

"He doesn't know they're fake," Blummer says, a compliment to the greens foreman and designers.

Further down Tinsmith Circle, Ron Battle and Geraldine Alvarez say they moved into their new home one day before the set decorators arrived.

"We went to sleep in a gray house and woke up with a blue house," recalls Alvarez. Workers also covered an arched window with plasterboard to make their home look more generic.

Tinsmith Circle residents are being paid for the alteration of their homes and for their inconvenience during the three-month shoot (20th Century-Fox also has promised to restore the homes to their original condition). The residents are being kept informed as to when filming will take place in their neighborhood. But they're not relaying the information to keep their circle from being overrun by strangers.

This means you'll have to drive to the production office at Saddlebrook to discover where Edward Scissorhands is being filmed. The only hitch is the movie's set is closed.

Tim Burton, the director of Batman, Beetlejuice and Pee-wee's Big Adventure, likes his privacy. He doesn't want gawkers interfering with his movie. His staff knows this.

Your only hope is to filch the call sheet listing the times and locations of each day's shoot. Call sheets are not for the asking.

First, you must get into Saddlebrook, which is where the shiny black Saab comes into play. You need to look suitably important when you pull up to the guard house. You will have to have a reason to be on the property. A meeting with movie star Johnny Depp is not one of them.

Then, you must find the production office, which is tucked far away from the conference center. Once inside, you have about three seconds to finger a call sheet before you're asked to leave.

The call sheet might say they're filming at Edward Scissorhands' castle atop a hill north of Dade City. Good luck getting there. You drive a third of a mile along a dusty single-lane road. At the crest is a Pasco County sheriff. Again, the Saab and an assured "you-know-I-belong-here" nod can get you through.

The 80-foot-high neo-Gothic manse is where Edward Scissorhands (Depp) was created and where he's discovered by Avon lady Wiest. The building actually is a two-sided facade fashioned out of plaster and cement. In the movie, it will look real.

Burton has already filmed the concluding scenes with the castle's grounds overgrown with vines and leaves. Last week, it was being landscaped with 15,000 zinnias, marigolds and other flowers for the film's beginning.

Burton no longer is talking publicly about Edward Scissorhands.

But when he did, he said his movie "taps into subconscious themes that took some of us 20 years of therapy to tap into."

The 30-year-old director developed the story's premise years ago.

"It comes from my love of fairy tales and folk tales. I'm trying to make the link between fairy tales and real life a little clearer," he said in March.

Burton looks like a youthful Tiny Tim, and indeed shares a taste for the tacky with the stringy-haired singer. Burton's movies are radiantly pretty; their characters, beguiling and bizarre.

A few days before principal photography began, Burton said, "It's a special project for me. It's not cut out of a mold, so I don't know what it's about."

Struggling and failing to be more specific, he said, "This is a much more pure thing to me. It's much more there. ... It's here."

Here last Friday night was Carpenters Run. The call sheet stated filming was to begin at 8:30; it commenced an hour later.

Half of Pasco County's off-duty police force was stationed at the entrance to Tinsmith Circle. They were looking for interlopers and wouldn't let anyone pass without Edward Scissorhands credentials.

But Carpenters Run is like the U.S.-Mexican border. Adjacent to the development are flat stretches of sand and brush. Around the perimeter is a wooden fence, complete with holes to wriggle through. This is known as trespassing. You are advised the penal system has laws dealing with trespassers.

Most of the onlookers surrounding Ryder's house last Friday were Carpenters Run residents. They dragged lawn chairs to designated areas across the street or spread blankets on the macadam.

The locals and crew have gotten to know one another fairly well during the past few months. Some are on a first-name basis; a few have eaten together in the neighborhood. Twentieth Century-Fox recently threw a party for the residents. All the stars attended, including Johnny Depp, who's a hot property with "21 Jump Street" and the recent release of Cry-Baby. Suzie Lebron, who lives across the street from Ryder's turquoise home, says on the second day of filming Burton invited her to view the TV monitor to see the shot he was hoping to capture.

Tonight, her guests include enough friends and family from Tampa that she orders three mushroom-sausage-pepperoni pizza and one deluxe (no anchovies). "My friends used to laugh at me for moving to Lutz," she says, "because they said nothing ever happened here."

Edward Scissorhands has proved them wrong.