The recently released film "The Ugly Truth" is set, sort of, in the newsroom of a Sacramento morning TV show. It's always fun to see how the places you know and love are shown on screen, even if they're hardly recognizable.

In this film, I suppose, you'd expect to see some scenes with the energetic street life around 20th and K, or the new, hopping R Street strip, or even the walkways at Town Center in El Dorado Hills.

Maybe there'd be views of the river from the bluffs near Folsom, or the old homes and trees in east Sac, the vineyards rolling through the Shenandoah Valley, the charming towns of the foothills or the vaguely mysterious Delta.

Well, uh, there is a foothill-ish thing with a creek, but not much of the rest. The thing is, lots of Hollywood productions that play with this area specifically want to avoid the real texture and depth of Sacramento.

We'll get to why in a quick moment, but first I want to be clear: This is in no way an endorsement of the movie. The discomfort of those two hours is not worth sitting there for the few Sacramento visuals you'll get.

So let's consider this more of an academic discussion. With that said, it's clear that Hollywood has changed its view of Sacramento.

Most movie and TV producers still see this region as vanilla – a California version of Anywhere, USA – but now, if you go by what gets on film and TV screens, we're a big vanilla, an Anywhere that at least has some cafes and a couple of good restaurants.

Big Vanilla is certainly how Sacramento looks in CBS' "The Mentalist," the only real hit rookie TV show last season. It features the made-up California Bureau of Investigation, based in Sacramento, and includes shots of buildings that seem to be taller than anything we really have. (Our height leader is the 30-story Wells Fargo Tower.)

But for the CBI gang, this area is just a jumping-off point, and Sacramento as a home base is purposely painted as a neutral-toned town so it won't get in the way of a plot.

Bruno Heller, the show's creator, was at the Television Critics Association news conference last summer in Beverly Hills before "The Mentalist" premiered. He told me he liked how Sacramento's image is vague enough – to people outside this area – that it could be a blank canvas for storytelling.

("The Mentalist" is shooting in Sacramento on Thursday and Friday and might still be looking for extras. For more info, check out www.media-casting.com or call 916-923-2131.)

In "The Ugly Truth," Sacramento is exactly the same neutral tool. It's a place that has to be something less than New York or Los Angeles, but big enough and interesting enough that Katherine Heigl's determined, career- focused TV producer character would stay there.

"I know a lot of people who use Sacramento as a prop just to be someplace different from L.A.," said Deon Taylor, a Sacramento filmmaker, writer and producer who uses this region extensively and with nuance. "It's easy for them to tell a story in a place they think is bland."

Often when producers pick places for the screen, they look for: 1) what might end up popular, 2) what fits their story and 3) what's cheapest. Not necessarily in that order.

That explains why "The Ugly Truth" was shot in Los Angeles, except for a few aerial views of downtown Sac, the Capitol and the Foresthill Bridge near Auburn, which is definitely movie-star photogenic.

Except in those rare cases when a place is truly woven into a movie or show – the way, say, "Manhattan" was about New York or "The Wire" was about Baltimore – Hollywood goes for bigger than life, but also rounder and without texture.

So we got Miami in "Miami Vice" as all pastels and lights, Los Angeles as the glitzy streets of Beverly Hills, or the monumental blandness of Sacramento in "Eight Is Enough." Even the real Sactown of the late '70s, when that show aired, is unrecognizable to people here today.

While Taylor echoes a bit of Hollywood's Big Vanilla viewpoint when he talks about why he thinks Sacramento is such a great location to shoot, he also shows the appreciative eye of a local.

"Sacramento is the only place I know that can double for five or six different cities," he said. "It can be L.A., the South, somewhere in Wisconsin.

"But I shoot here as a filmmaker because I like the authenticity of this city. It's the landscape, the structure of the houses, the Fab 40s, the small but really cool downtown, the Capitol. There's so much here to use."

The thing is, a city's reputation is often years behind reality. "If you look at how all cities are portrayed on film, it's always a stereotype," said Mike Testa of the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau.

"The press coverage Sacramento has received from outside has changed a lot over the last 10 years," he said, "It's no longer about Sutter's Fort, Old Sac and the Gold Rush. Now it's about the night life, Second Saturday, and new restaurants. Sacramento has really grown up."

And it's developed a genuine personality. The central city, in particular, is young and alive, vibrant with urbane energy ranging from a hot culinary scene to clubs, art and theater to cruiser bikes, but that character spreads across the region.

"It's a lot easier to sell Sacramento now," Testa said. "People just have to see it."

Well, yeah, as long as it's not in a movie.

Call The Bee's Rick Kushman, (916) 321-1187. Listen to him Tuesdays at 8:40 a.m. on NewsTalk 1530 (KFBK).