Erik Larsen

@Erik_Larsen

An Ocean County freeholder wants to pitch an idea for a movie to Hollywood studios — not a story, but a place.

With 44 miles of Atlantic coastline, boardwalks, beachfront mansions, colonial and Victorian-era architecture, thousands of acres of farmland and tens of thousands of acres of forested wilderness, and even a vineyard and an early 20th Century ghost town — Ocean County is one humongous backlot, explained Freeholder Joseph H. Vicari.

“I’m trying to have an aggressive campaign for Ocean County, in getting the movie industry to come to Ocean County or the TV industry to come here,” said Vicari, who is liaison to business and tourism on the county’s governing body. “It really perks up the economy and it’s good for the name of Ocean County.”

However, Vicari acknowledged that he has his work cut out for him. Ocean County has long had a love-hate relationship with the television and film industry.

While it is proud of native Hollywood stars such as Piper Perabo and Brian Geraghty, who both grew up in Toms River, and who have both on their own time helped the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office with different public safety campaigns, Ocean County has not been the most hospitable place for television and film producers.

A cop on TV, Brian Geraghty cast to help Prosecutor

In 2012, Toms River even adopted an ordinance to keep Snooki and JWoww from filming a reality show spinoff of "Jersey Shore" in the county seat. Even though municipal officials conceded at the time that the ordinance probably would not hold up in court, the rules were designed to dissuade Hollywood from putting up with the inevitable legal hassle of coming to Toms River.

“We got a black mark with Snooki, no question about it,” Vicari said. “We’re not talking about that. She’s not here.”

Toms River first soured on Hollywood during the filming here of the original, “The Amityville Horror.” The 1979 movie was based on the book of the same name published two years earlier. Actors James Brolin and Margot Kidder played George and Kathy Lutz, who move with their three children into a Dutch colonial house in the coastal town of Amityville, N.Y.

The Lutzes alleged that something sinister was already occupying their dream house when they moved in and as they described it, this particular squatter was neither a local nor human.

In an effort to recreate what the Lutzes said they witnessed during their agonizing 28 days in the house, the filmmakers engineered plenty of nocturnal screams and middle–of–the–night demonic mayhem, which did not go over well with their corporeal, real-life neighbors on Brooks Road and Dock Street.

Toms River still haunted by 'Amityville Horror'

After a sequel was filmed in 1982, the then-Dover Township Committee adopted a blanket prohibition on commercial filmmaking in all residential zones.

Today, Toms River requires that filmmakers present proof of insurance for potential bodily injury in the amount of $1 million and name the township as one of the insured, notify all residents within a 500-foot radius of the shooting location, and provide the full cost of whatever police presence is required. A project can also be rejected if any member of the cast or crew has a criminal record. The ordinance also restricts the hours a production can film in town.

No movie has been filmed in Toms River since.

“I’m very optimistic about it and I want to involve all 33 municipalities, eventually,” Vicari said. “As far as getting this industry into Ocean County. … I’m going to meet with the state and talk to many mayors in Ocean County.”

Although neighboring Monmouth and Atlantic counties have more film location credits to their names, part of the 1975 movie “The Hindenburg,” starring George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft, was filmed outside historic Hangar No. 1 at what is now Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.

Also filmed at the Lakehurst portion of the base was Frank Capra’s 1931 “Dirigible,” about a fictional U.S. Navy expedition to the South Pole aboard an airship.

Most recently, director Jonathan Demme transformed the Sahara Sand pits of Eagleswood into the Kuwaiti desert in his 2004 remake of “The Manchurian Candidate,” starring Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep and Liev Schreiber.

But even if Vicari is successful in creating a welcoming committee for Hollywood location scouts, the freeholder concedes that Gov. Chris Christie’s administration remains an impediment to any practical incentive.

After he became governor, Christie suspended the film and television production tax credit program in 2010 for budgetary reasons, and retroactively blocked the 2009 credit for MTV's popular reality series “Jersey Shore,” which was shot in Seaside Heights.

“I have no interest in policing the content of such projects; however, as Chief Executive I am duty-bound to ensure that taxpayers are not footing a $420,000 bill for a project which does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the State and its citizens," Christie wrote in a 2011 letter to the Economic Development Authority.

Since then, the state has abolished its tax credit for film and television production even as neighboring New York State offers a 30 percent fully refundable tax credit on production and post-production expenses, according to the New York Governor’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development.

New Jersey does waive its 7 percent sales tax for materials purchased in the state that are used for or in the production of films and television programs, according to the New Jersey Television and Motion Picture Commission.

Vicari said there is not much he can do about a lack of a tax credit, except attempt to lobby the administration to restore it.

“We’re going make it very easy to cut the red tape,” Vicari said. “The state should have tax incentives … the (lack of) incentives have hurt, there’s no question about it.”

WATCH: The movie "Freeheld," a 2015 dramatic film starring Julianne Moore as a terminally ill Ocean County detective who battles the Board of Freeholders to will her pension to her same-sex partner, was set in Ocean County but filmed in New York State because of tax breaks there.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com