Ralph Llateras, "location manager," is a nasty, "My house, my rules" type of manchild. Basically,…read morehe owns the place. And even after youve paid thousands of dollars to use his space and agreed to uphold strict, contracted terms, he thinks he owns you and every other part of a production happening under "his" roof. He will make that explicitly clear to everyone, multiple times, in case you forget.
We paid good money to use his space and during shooting he followed us around, nosing his way in everything, beeping in on the walkies with his two cents on things not at all concerning him, and taking from our (head counted) catering.
He threw a fit and screamed obscenities at one of our PA's for "stealing" some wire cutters, when later his daughter explained that she'd used them, and when we brought this up to him, all he said was "I dont like anyone touching my stuff, not even her." No apology. Nothing. She however was very apologetic and explained "he only has two moods, normal and pissed off, and he switches them on a dime." Sad to hear someone having to describe their father that way to excuse his obnoxious behavior.
His wife and daughter are nice. But thats not enough of a reason for you to ever want to use this place for staging anything. Literally anything else would better. If you dont believe me, go check it out. The worst part about all of this is that the space isnt even nice. Its dumpy. If everything was new and pristine, maybe id understand some of the more anal retentive qualities of little Ralphie. But its not.
He likes to bring up all the big movie studios hes worked with to let you know how important he is, like every else hasn't worked with the five companies that make movies in hollywood. He doesnt mention that his "big studio work" was when they actually had another, by all accounts much nicer location, which they no longer have.
All in all, a real jerk, who doesnt deserve anyones business. But dont take my word for it, go meet with him in person and see how long he can sell you on his "nice" image. He probably will get his wife to do the walkthrough though like they did for us, since she was pleasant, and save his beady eyed little soul patch having face until after youve paid and are shooting and its too late.
Also all of this happened over two days.