When Hollywood knocks on someone’s door with the intent to rent a house for a movie, it’s not uncommon for a director to replace the owner’s furniture with items that better fit the vision or theme of the film. Walls might be painted and curtains replaced. If the carpet is the wrong color, away it goes.

But when Alexander Payne saw Tiare Finney’s historic home in upper Nuuanu, the director pronounced it a perfect fit for "The Descendants" — from the two-story home’s colonial-revival design to Poppy, the pudgy pygmy goat who lives in the front yard.

Finney wasn’t sure if she should be proud or terrified.

This was the place her parents bought in 1941, where she grew up in the 1950s and ’60s, where her two children — now grown — spent their formative years. There was history here that went beyond its official status as a historic Hawaii home.

And she knew what was coming. She had experience with film crews. Finney, 62, was a model, acted in TV commercials and worked as a stuntwoman on the original "Hawaii Five-0," so she understood the kind of production footprint involved.

"I had fear and trepidation," she said. "I couldn’t believe I said yes to this."

Payne used the home for a key scene with the film’s star, George Clooney, whose character in "The Descendants" knows the owners so well that he walks right into the kitchen as he yells for the residents. Payne’s roving camera angles and close-ups cemented Finney’s home in movie history. Throughout the encounter, Finney — who appears as one of Clooney’s kamaaina cousins later in the film — can see the story of her family melding with the movie, which was inspired by the novel written by close family friend Kaui Hart Hemmings.

FINNEY’S home is filled with hundreds of pieces of art and memorabilia collected by her parents and by herself and her husband, John, a local businessman. It is kamaaina style in the eclectic: tropical-themed art and furnishings, historic photographs, glass fishing balls, canoe paddles, shell scapes and mounted hunting trophies. A huge sawfish bill is propped against a wall. A trio of inflated puffer fish dangle from a string.

"They used the house and my furniture and my art pretty much as is," Finney said.

It can be unsettling to see your home on a movie screen, but Finney was touched when she saw her kitchen.

"I was most taken by the personal family photographs on the refrigerator while George Clooney gives his lines in the foreground," Finney said. "My deceased mom is there."

Her mother, Loretta Richert, was a larger-than-life woman. She was a champion speedboat racer as a young woman, gave it up when she got married, and after raising her children became a race car driver. Richert would drive her Porsche Spyder full speed up Pali Highway and back home — at night —before the police could catch her.

The film crew that arrived to shoot in March 2010, during exceptionally rainy weather, was upward of 80 people. Finney worried about muddy feet, while the crew worried about lighting. There were people on the roof, on the lanai, in rooms and hallways and the kitchen. At one point a crew stood outside in a driving rain, clinging to huge reflectors that threatened to take off with every gust.

But they left the home cleaner than when they found it. Someone even checked to see that none of the walls was chipped.

Payne’s directing style embraces realism, so it didn’t surprise anyone that Poppy got her close-up. She was part of the ambience of the home, so Payne filmed her on the front yard under a 50-foot-tall lychee tree.

"He said, ‘Leave the goat right there,’" Finney said. "Alexander lay down on his belly with the camera to get the perfect shot."

And that’s a wrap …

Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.