Andreas Wanner can still laugh about some of the events he experienced while looking for motifs for films and TV series. Once he had to call a family man who had made his house available for filming. The property had already been chosen, but the director changed his mind at the last minute. Wanner picked up the phone and apologized to the man, saying he was sorry but the recordings couldn’t be made after all. The answer: In two days he should please call again. A little puzzled, Wanner asked why. “My wife is cleaning the whole house right now,” explained the family man. “She’s never done that before.”
A motif finder for films and TV series is Andreas Wanner, who was born in Wolfratshausen and has lived in Bad Tölz for more than 20 years. He now works with his company “Bavaricus” as a location manager.
(Photo: Manfred Neubauer)
Houses, farms, alpine huts, churches, castles, landscapes: As a so-called “location scout”, the native of Wolfratshausen, who has lived in Bad Tölz for more than 20 years, has already found many motifs for films and TV series. He used to work as a savings bank clerk before he fell seriously ill with cancer. Wanner then changed his mind and remembered his origins: As the scion of a family of actors, he got into the film business, but didn’t like being in front of the camera. Meanwhile he is with his company “bavaricus” works as a location manager, a job for which there is hardly any training. He advises directors and cameramen, looks at various motifs for a film with them, chooses locations in a process of elimination and explains, for example, that a farm near Salzburg might be ideal, but it’s too far away for two days of shooting if everything other takes place in Bad Tölz. “Or a train station looks beautiful, but if I need it in the morning and the sun is wrong, I can’t take it.” Wanner explains what is possible and what is not, and also takes care of logistical issues such as electricity and water supply, traffic closures and budget issues.
More than four years ago, he brought the ZDF series “Tonio und Julia” to Bad Tölz, which ran in ten episodes until October 2020. “Yes, I have I brought,” he says. It’s about a Catholic pastor and a family therapist, played by Maximilian Grill and Oona Devi Liebich. The shooting was mainly in the old town of Gries, at the Mühlfeld Church and in the Gasthaus Zantl next door, the production office was in the Prinz -Heinrich barracks in Lenggries.In the beginning, says Wanner, who was born in 1959, the series was supposed to take place near Miesbach, “but of course I was fixated on Bad Tölz”.The local character in the first TV episodes should be more village-like, for which the spa town seemed big. But it has a big advantage, says Wanner: “You can play Tölz in different sizes, you can play wonderfully small there. “For example in Gries with its old craftsmen’s houses, which nestle close together. Only the disturbed there The wall of the boys’ school with the barber shop underneath looks ugly, but Wanner says no subject is ideal, and you also have to rely on the cameraman .
The picturesque old town part of Gries in Bad Tölz, which is currently being redesigned, has often served as a film backdrop – including for the ZDF series “Tonio and Julia”.
(Photo: Harry Wolfsbauer)
With the ZDF series, he didn’t exactly meet with approval in Tölz at first. This was due to “Bullen von Tölz”, the well-known crime series with Ottfried Fischer and Ruth Drexel, which had been completed almost a decade earlier after 69 episodes. “The bull,” says Wanner, “was a huge disadvantage for me.” The film team at the time probably thought they owned Bad Tölz. The Marktstraße was closed off a few times (“that’s not so nice anymore”), three or four parking spaces were blocked for example because of the recordings, but then filmed in Benediktbeuern. And so on. And now a new TV series? “Again such a Sch … film,” Wanner heard. So he went to the then mayor Josef Janker. He met him for breakfast and asked him to write everything down and send it to the public order office. “I had the permit in the afternoon,” says Wanner. Tölz doesn’t get cheaper advertising than such a series, Janker said. The car park on the Isarkai, night shots in artificial rain with the fire brigade, special permits for Marktstraße – everything went smoothly, says Wanner. After three or four episodes, the mood in the city changed. “People were happy because we also worked differently.”
The now closed, more than 400-year-old Gasthof Zantl is partly the parish office of “Tonio und Julia” and partly the apartment of the priest’s father. Some scenes were filmed in Gries. At Jungmayrplatz, house number 11 with the now empty shop window was the “Kümmerer vegetable shop,” says Ulla Schneiders. as Tölzer city tempter Several times a year, she takes groups of tourists to various film locations in the city area – under the motto “Following the traces of a film through Bad Tölz”. According to Wanner, half of the television audience watches the action and the other half watches the scenery. And Tölz, he says, is “one of the most beautiful cities”. With its old gabled houses in the ensemble, the Gries, the Isar, the view of the mountains. For him, as the location manager, it is also important that the municipality that is being considered as the location has a film officer: “Someone who takes care of everything, who knows where and how to give something.” Bad Tölz has press spokeswoman Ina Farlock from the tourist information who takes over this task.
In his job, Wanner is mainly at the foot of the Alps, from eastern Bavaria to the Allgäu, where he is currently working for the TV series “Daheim in den Bergen”. He’s someone who knows the people here, and the landscape too. The producers and directors know that. In between, he also works in Berlin, where he looks for an apartment that will soon be vacant on Ebay as a possible location. “You have to be inventive,” he says. Or in Munich, where the hall of a newspaper publisher was transformed into a subway underworld for the series “Katakomben”. But then it’s back home. In 2011 he had the Seibold-Hof in Wackersberg turned from a pretty property into an old farmstead for the film “Ellis Neuer Mann” with Jutta Speidel. “We took down the shutters, applied the patina, and painted the hallway green.”
Homeowners who leave their home to a film crew have to reckon with resolute, even brutal interventions. Wallpapering, new paint, even breaking through a wall – all this happens, but is discussed with the landlord beforehand. And the compensation is quite respectable, even if, according to Wanner, it is not entirely true that an average of one month’s rent is paid per day. “It is less.” And sometimes the transformations even get to the owners. The owner of the Seibold-Hof first said about the new green in her hallway: “For heaven’s sake, what a color,” says Wanner. “But after three days she wanted to leave it like that.”