NBC PILOT TAKES A PEEK AT BORDER'S DRUG SCENE

If you strip the glamour from Hollywood, you get the real Hollywood.

Just ask the approximately 50 El Pasoans who served as extras for
"Kingpin," an NBC television pilot shot here earlier this week.

The Oscars and Emmys may dazzle, but the roads leading to those ceremonies
are marked with the kind of tedium we associate with reality, not fantasy.

"Our scene will probably last five seconds," police Detective Jose Baca,
40, said. "We were there from 11 a.m. till 4:30 p.m. Monday, but only about
one hour was actual shooting."

An air date has not been scheduled for the pilot.

"There was a lot of 'hurry up and wait,' " Baca said.

A "Hollywood" sign will never replace the star on the mountain, but for one
week, El Paso became "Hollywood Southwest."

Crews shot scenes on West Paisano Drive and the Paso del Norte Bridge, with
one scene involving a federal narcotics agent who has been stuffed into the
trunk of a car.

Baca and a colleague, Sgt. Zina Jurado, also 40, portray El Paso police
officers who rescue the agent.

Bad Publicity?

Television officials, trying to ease fears that the program would create
bad publicity for the community, addressed the City Council the week before
filming began.

"Nothing negative is said about El Paso," said R. Michael Charske,B01 the
location scout for the production. "And the police do rescue a DEA agent."

Perhaps, but why was the agent trapped in the trunk in the first place?

Unless someone mistook her for a bag of groceries, it was not a good
Samaritan who deposited her there. What does that say about El Paso?

It says nothing about El Paso. But it does say volumes about the Hollywood
version of El Paso. And viewers should be sophisticated enough to know the
difference.

Yes, El Paso is known as a drug corridor. But residents regard it as a safe
community.

In a recent El Paso Times/KVIA-ABC 7 poll, 36 percent of the respondents
said they felt safer now than they did two years ago.

Miami Nice?

In the 1980s, "Miami Vice" was one of the most popular -- and influential
- -- programs on television. Miami officials were so concerned that they
launched a "Miami Nice" campaign. Was it necessary? Would you pass up a
visit to Miami because thugs roughed up Crockett and Tubbs?

"Unfortunately, that's a way of life on the border," Baca said. "Criminals
do smuggle drugs across, but they generally transport them to other parts
of the country."

The filming has pumped about $600,000 into the local economy, El Paso Film
Commissioner Susie Gaines said.

"I had a lot of fun," Baca said. "I don't think it'll turn me into a prima
donna, although other officers have been calling me 'Hollywood Joe.' "