How's this for runaway production. Robert Towne is shooting Ask the Dust, based on John Fante's classic Los Angeles novel of the 1930s, in Cape Town, South Africa. He explains in today's New York Times:

"The weather, the beach, the sky, the desert," Mr. Towne said, as he wrapped up a day's shooting. "It is just a strange, serendipitous thing that we are in South Africa, because nothing could look more like Southern California than this does."

Well, I can think of one place.