I wrote here last week that the home-improvement cable TV show “Disaster House” is being shot in Englewood, and it’s wild. The idea is to create a man-made or natural disaster in the housethen show the audience how to fix it. They bring in an elephant to clog the toilet, the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls to crack up the drywall, the fire department to flood the house with 5 feet of water. It sounds like fun — as long as you don’t live next door. Two e-mails immediately came in from next-door neighbors who were not too happy.
Catherine Storey wrote, ” ‘Disaster House’ has been filming next door to me, on a quiet, tree-lined street in Englewood, since late April. The TV show has completely destroyed our privacy and peace and quiet all summer. . . . They block the street with big trucks and cranes, create foul-smelling smoke (not to mention the elephant aroma!) . . . I could go on and on.”
Then this from neighbor Lisa Gee. “The neighbors have suffered an absolute loss of privacy. . . . Last week I had wild animal cages in my yard. My neighbor’s trees were absolutely scorched by a flame thrower. (Meant to show how what? How a house would fare if a dragon breathed on it?) And on Friday night . . . I had to take my kids and leave due to the smoke bombs which ‘Disaster House’ was firing off (to help solve the average homeowner’s problem when Wilson Goode from Philadelphia comes back with a vengeance?!).”
High Noon is the local production company making the show — and they understand the neighbors’ concerns and, says producer Graham Clarke, are doing all they can to keep people happy.
“It’s tough,” he says. “Whenever you make a television show like this you are bound to inconvenience people at one time or another. But we’ve taken steps to open lines of communication between us and the neighbors. We haven’t gotten many complaints at all.”
In fact, they’ve even received some fan mail. “We are big fans of the show,” write one couple. “We enjoyed seeing the hot tub filled with water and the elephant.”
In any case, filming stops in early September. It’ll all go back to normal. Unless they forget to take home the elephant.
The girls of summer
303 magazine’s August Gentlemen edition is out — with a photo spread of nine Denver business women posing naked. And this is more Maxim than mamma.
And the ladies are: Cassandra Bojoh from Jet Hotel; Diana Gromley from Donna Baldwin Talent; Kara Miller-Schmacher of FitnessInsurance; Sasha Moinzad of AERA Studios; Jacqueline Cohen of Kris Kenny Connections; Wendy MacLean of Surf Couture; Janice Woods of Black Tulip Antiques; Tina Hensen at 303; and Kim Herman at Matthew Morris Salon.
City spirit.
Chris Dunn, the former Fox 31 weatherman, has landed happily at KPHO- Channel 5 in Phoenix, the CBS affiliate . . . Peter Max painted the cover of the current Denver Magazine — and he’s in Denver Aug. 29 & 30 @ The Road Show Company at 210 St. Paul St. . . . Sez who: “You should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.” Quentin Crisp
Bill Husted’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. You can reach him at 303-954-1486 or at bhusted@denverpost.com. Take a peek at Husted’s next column at .
