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Costa Mesa barbershop provides backdrop at Newport Beach Film Festival

Filmmaker Alexa Polar shot part of her film "Speakeasy to Me" inside Hawleywood's, which combines a barbershop with an old-fashioned speakeasy.
Filmmaker Alexa Polar shot part of her film “Speakeasy to Me” inside Hawleywood’s, which combines a barbershop with an old-fashioned speakeasy.
(SCOTT SMELTZER / Daily Pilot)
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If Alexa Polar makes it in Hollywood, she may have a barbershop with a nearly identical name to thank for it.

The director, whose musical “Speakeasy to Me” will premiere at this year’s Newport Beach Film Festival, sought an interior setting that would evoke the furtive watering holes of the Al Capone era.

She found it at Hawleywood’s, a Costa Mesa barbershop whose back room — concealed, in classic speakeasy fashion, behind a bookcase — features a bar, a miniature stage and decor and magazines intended for the 18-and-older crowd.

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“When you go in, it’s for men only,” said Polar, a Westminster resident. “It’s a barbershop, and then there’s a bookcase, and you pull on one of the shelves and it opens. And there’s literally an area for, like, a man cave.”

Polar, who began “Speakeasy to Me” while studying film at Orange Coast College, rented out the space for a day and set to work creating a period piece. With cinematographer Robin Pabello, she blacked out the walls and ceiling and hung a sparkly curtain. The stage played host to a flapper dance number, the small bar a meeting between the film’s romantic leads.

When Polar’s film screens in the festival’s OCC Shorts program on April 26, Hawleywood’s co-owner Kathy Dang plans to attend, along with other barbershop staff. That’s partly because “Speakeasy to Me” isn’t the only entry at this year’s festival to feature Hawleywood’s; fellow OCC filmmaker Matthew Guastella spotlighted the shop as part of his short documentary “Barbershop Traditions Today.”

“We always support the Newport Beach Film Festival,” Dang said. “It’s right in our stomping grounds.”

The Newport festival, now in its 16th year, is anything but a purely local phenomenon. Still, however many travelers the annual event lures, it amounts to one thing for many locals: the neighborhood film festival. And part of the excitement is seeing themselves and their region on the big screen.

The husband-and-wife team of Ravi Kapoor and Meera Simhan shot parts of their teen comedy, “Miss India America,” at Irvine High School and other area locations.

For Simhan, who acts in the film and co-wrote the screenplay, shooting at the school signified a homecoming: She graduated from Irvine High years ago, and the film’s opening scene depicts a commencement on the same field where she walked.

Kapoor, a first-time feature director, said he aimed to capture the region’s ambience — however indefinable — with the look of the film.

“I think there’s definitely a sense of space and sunniness and brightness to Orange County,” he said. “That’s what I always feel with Orange County.

“Orange County is a mixed area, but there’s just this sense of clean, open spaces and clarity. So we were trying to find that even in the color palettes of the film — that clarity and sunshine.”

Jason Blalock, whose documentary “Sawdust and Sand: The Art of Douglas Miller” will appear on a short-film program, tracked a Laguna Beach artist who has photographed his city’s residents for more than four decades.

A Laguna native who now lives in Oakland, Blalock got the inspiration for “Sawdust” when he spotted himself in a photo that Miller had taken years ago — and that one of Blalock’s friends had posted on Facebook.

Blalock contacted Miller and visited Laguna four times to follow the artist on his camera rounds. When the Laguna Art Museum hosted a preview screening of “Sawdust” in December, Blalock saw the extent of Miller’s local following: Around 300 spectators packed the room, which quickly ran out of chairs.

“He’s a hero to many, evidently,” Blalock said.

While local filmmakers relish seeing their work on the screen, others in the industry may view Newport from a different angle. Fifteen years after the event debuted with a film that might have been tailor-made for a festival launch — Billy Wilder’s acidic 1950 satire “Sunset Blvd.,” about an aging actress who clings to her yen for vintage Hollywood — the tradition founded by Todd Quartararo and Gregg Schwenk has steadily racked up resume items.

The Best Picture Oscar-winner “Crash” opened the festival in 2005, and this year’s kickoff selection is “The Water Diviner,” Russell Crowe’s directorial debut. The organizers also stress global outreach, to the point where, earlier this year, they arranged for a heated bus to cruise the chilly streets of London and invite pedestrians to step inside and learn about the event.

“It’s definitely a growing festival, and it’s a festival that’s growing year after year,” said Sophie Nicolaou, vice president of communications at Main Street Films, whose drama “LaMotta: The Bronx Bull” will screen at Newport this year.

The festival, which runs from April 23 to 30, operates at seven Orange County venues, including the Orange County Museum of Art and the private Sage Hill School. As in past years, the schedule will include a Disney rarities program on April 26; a centennial tribute to Orson Welles, who was born in 1915, is planned for the same day.

In addition to OCC, the festival taps the local film-school community with programs from UCLA, USC, UCI, the Orange County School of the Arts and others.

“It’s something that the entire community can participate in,” said Schwenk, the festival’s CEO. “It truly has something for everyone. If someone has an interest or has always wondered what a film festival experience is like, Newport is an excellent place to try that out and see what everyone’s talking about.”

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If You Go

What: Newport Beach Film Festival

Where: Lido Live, 3459 Via Lido, Newport Beach; Starlight Triangle Square Cinemas, 1870 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa; Island Cinemas, 327 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach; Edwards Big Newport 6, 300 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach; Regency South Coast Village, 1561 W. Sunflower Ave., Santa Ana; Orange County Museum of Art, 850 San Clemente Drive, Newport Beach; The Studio at Sage Hill, 20402 Newport Coast Drive, Newport Beach

When: April 23 to 30

Cost: Most screenings $14, with additional charge for some events; visit website for individual prices

Information: (949) 253-2880 or www.newportbeachfilmfest.com

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