<em>More secrets of the movie trade....</em>

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are still out there waiting to shoot this scene as far as I can gather. The crowd of spectators outside Seville Cathedral hoping to see them is dwindling a bit. Not surprised. Making movies is dreadfully boring. It's also more than a little deceptive.

This Cruise-Diaz vehicle clearly has a massive budget. Must cost a fortune to close down the centre of a busy city the way they have. Smaller movies have to be a bit more creative. The one they made of <em>Semana Santa</em> certainly was.

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The handsome building on the right in the picture below is, today, the very smart hotel, <em><a href="http://www.casasypalacios.com/juderia/es/" target="_blank">Las Casas de la Juderia</a>,</em> a very nice place to stay if you can afford it. Ten years ago, though, it didn't look anything like this. It was a largely derelict private mansion, uninhabitable, grubby and more the sort of place you'd expect rats to stay than posh tourists. Perfect for the film business!

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Yes, the production team for <em>Semana Santa</em> hired the whole shabby mansion for the duration of the shoot and used it time and time again. One of the upstairs bedrooms became the lair of the artist twins whose murder -- full of grotesque special effects -- kicks off the movie.

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The sight of blow-up sex dolls hanging in the front windows prompted a bit of a local outrage I seem to recall. Passing schoolkids could see them. Yikes.

The interior also became the private mansion where the climax took place, with Mira Sorvino fighting for her life.

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There was an outside patio that had some other function in the book and a couple of other locations, all of which happened somewhere inside that selfsame building. Don't ask me what. I don't recall any of them being in the book. One of the most memorable scenes (in the filming anyway) happened in a downstairs patio with a small fountain at its centre. I think it may still be there in the new and very plush hotel, here.

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In the movie Mira was chased downstairs by the bad guy out to get her and had her head viciously dumped into the water of the fountain. This was a pretty bad-tempered shoot all round from what I could see. Lots of people not getting on. On the first take she raced downstairs, got dunked in the water... and at least one of the crew cheered very loudly. Cue retake...

Funny to think of all that happening inside the walls of what now looks a very swish hotel indeed. I popped my head through the door and asked a charming member of staff about the hotel. He told me a few things then I asked if he knew about the movie made there just ten short years before. He nodded and said he vaguely remembered it.

I thought of telling him I wrote the book. But I didn't want to chance my luck. So, in the spirit of good old-fashioned British journalism, I made my excuses and left.