High-profile actor Matt Damon, 40, dons a hardhat and operates a forklift in the Clint Eastwood-directed movie "Hereafter" that starts theatre distribution on 22 October.
The hush-hush shooting of the forklift scenes occurred on 19 January in the Crockett warehouse of the C&H Sugar Co Inc refinery. In mid-2009, the production company selected the site because of its industrial appearance but prohibited any disclosure until after the shooting ended.
The location is portrayed onscreen as a flour mill.
About 125 people from the studio spent up to 12 hours at the refinery, with the forklift-related activity taking about two hours. "We required everyone from the studio to follow our rules for hard hats, safety glasses and hardcover OSHA toes," says Jake Peterson, C&H warehouse manager, but the crew was "exempt from the safety rules during filming". At first, "we were leery to let anyone get on the forklift".
Apparently from some prior instruction, Damon "was familiar with how a forklift operates", Peterson says. "He looked nervous at first" but came across as a "good guy" with "down-to-earth" characteristics.
In the warehouse, Peterson acquainted Damon with a C&H Sugar-owned battery-powered Yale forklift with 5,000-lb (2,250-kg) lifting capacity and operator-monitoring ShockWatch equipment. "We programmed a ShockWatch key in Damon's name, and I showed him how to log on to the forklift as well as the basic functions of the lift," Peterson says.
In one scene, Damon drives the forklift, picks up a pallet of boxes, raises it and places it on top of other boxes. In another scene, he drives the forklift without any load.
Inadvertently, at one point the Damon-driven forklift "rubbed paint onto a metal box in which we store empty pallets", Peterson said. "He pushed the box against a column but with so little impact it did not set off the ShockWatch unit."
In another scene, the film crew used Peterson's office for a simulated firing of Damon's character.
"C&H had about 40 extras available, some of whom were selected to be in scenes," Peterson says.
Until he sees the movie himself, Peterson is unaware of what scenes from C&H Sugar made the final cut. Principal photography occurred from October 2009 to February 2010 and included locations in London, San Francisco, Paris and Hawaii.
Peterson saw the crew take images of a nearby bridge that crosses the tidal Carquinez Strait near San Pablo Bay. While on the set, Eastwood was heard saying: "I've been driving across that bridge looking at the refinery since I was a little kid."
C&H Sugar has roots extending back to 1906 and a long history of refining and packaging sugar in Crockett, which is about 28 miles (45 km) north east of downtown San Francisco. American Sugar Refining Inc, of Yonkers, New York, acquired C&H in 2005.
The Crockett site employs about 500, including nearly 100 people in the warehouse. The operation uses 25 leased electric Yale forklifts for most tasks and, to handle peak workloads, also has more than 15 Crown and Yale brand "older electric forklifts", Peterson says.
The Union City, California, facility of Yale dealership Pacific Material Handling Solutions Inc services the Damon-driven forklift and other C&H Sugar equipment under a Yale flat-rate guaranteed-maintenance program.
"Hereafter" interweaves and merges three parallel stories about three people impacted by death in different ways. Damon plays the role of George, a US factory worker who can communicate with the dead. The female lead is Belgian actress Cécile de France, who plays French television journalist Marie.
Movie distributor Warner Bros is marketing "Hereafter" as a Damon vehicle with a studio effort to get him nominated in the lead actor category for a possible Oscar from the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A successful early screening of "Hereafter" at the 9-19 September Toronto International Film Festival appears to have reinforced that effort.