Pittsburgh the new Hollywood Hotspot

Over the past two years, Pittsburgh has become a hot spot for Hollywood sightings and movies.  From Abduction to The Dark Knight Rises, fans of Hollywood actors have ran around Pittsburgh trying to get a glimpse of the stars or the movies being shot.  Many local actors and actresses have been employed has extras in the movies, and it has brought a boost to Pittsburgh's economy.  Besides the benefits to our city, Hollywood actors have praised our city for it's hospitality.  This has made more movies want to come back and film here in the future. 

For most of the city and its surrounding neighborhoods, August 10-21, 2011, meant warm summer days in Pittsburgh, great for hitting the pool, some outdoor shopping — you know, shorts and T-shirt weather. During those same 12 days, though, on Smithfield Street and Oliver Avenue Downtown, the forecast called for snow, albeit a man-made snowfall.

Just three months earlier, Academy-Award winning director Christopher Nolan set up shop all over Pittsburgh, the location he’d chosen to shoot the final installment of his ultra-popular and critically acclaimed trilogy of Batman films, The Dark Knight Rises. The film, which debuts on July 20, includes the aforementioned snow-covered scene that we have already glimpsed from fans’ YouTube videos, actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a can of gasoline, and Batman’s tank-like, camo-colored “Tumbler” vehicle.

The Dark Knight Rises has been a topic of conversation and a source of anticipation since the debut of the first teaser trailer about a year ago. Here in Pittsburgh, we’ve been anxious for the third Friday in July since we first learned that our city would be a temporary home to mega stars including Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway (who was here to film Love & Other Drugs in 2009), and Gordon-Levitt.

Movie buffs and Pittsburgh residents flocked to the areas where Nolan and his crew filmed, uploading pictures and videos, posting to online threads where shots were being set up, and speculating on new locations, but they weren’t the only ones who had something to gain from Pittsburgh’s transformation into Gotham City. In an interview with the entertainment blog Thompson on Hollywood, Hardy, who plays the film’s main villain, Bane, sang Pittsburgh’s praises, saying that he felt he owed the city a lot. 
In fact, Hardy’s first movie in the United States, Warrior, was also shot in Pittsburgh. After filming a scene in Heinz Field — during which Pittsburgh Steeler turned Gotham City Rogue, Hines Ward, scores a touchdown as the field implodes behind him — Hardy auctioned off prizes to the crowd of extras while still in full costume but speaking with his natural British accent.

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman

Christian Bale, the film’s leading man, has spent his fare share of time here as well. Less than a year after filming The Dark Knight Rises wrapped, Bale returned alongside Zoe Saldana, Willem Dafoe, and Woody Harrelson to film Out Of The Furnace. The movie was shot in nearby Braddock, and wrapped the first week of June. Bale is an often-speculated method actor, meaning that he rarely breaks character during the course of a production, which explains the absence of day-to-day Bale sightings. Many actors, though, seem to have embraced the city for its livability and taken advantage of both its upbeat urban atmosphere, as well as its hometown vibe.
 
During the filming of Jack Reacher, Tom Cruise, his wife, Katie Holmes, and their daughter, Suri, were often spotted living it up in spots around town. Cruise and Holmes often dined at Meat & Potatoes Downtown, took 6-year-old Suri ice-skating at PPG Place and to Soergel Orchards, and visited The Milkshake Factory in the South Side. Holmes was spotted at Amazing Yoga’s Shadyside studio, too. And though the film caused its fair share of traffic headaches for South Side residents, often closing down the 10th Street Bridge and causing a clutter on Carson Street, Cruise’s presence in town was felt, and it seemed he enjoyed his time here almost as much as we did.

Earlier this spring, British actress Emma Watson took a liking to the city while she filmed Perks Of Being A Wallflower, directed by Upper St. Clair native Stephen Chbosky. In fact, during an interview on LIVE! With Regis & Kelly, Watson told host Regis Philbin, “Pittsburgh is awesome. I had the best six weeks.”

Watson spent her time jogging, shopping at J.Crew, buying DVDs at Barnes & Noble with co-star Logan Lerman, and eating at Eat & Park, “a bunch of times,” a tidbit she reported to local news media.
Maybe the most sought-after celebrity in town was Taylor Lautner, who filmed the movie Abduction in 2010, and lived in a home in Mt. Lebanon’s Virginia Manor. Fans staked out the then-18-year-old actor’s temporary home, and students at Hampton High School, where parts of the film were shot, anxiously wondered if he’d sit in their seat or open their locker. PNC Park filled with extras during the shooting of a scene in which Lautner sports a throwback Pirates jersey and races through the stadium, sliding down banisters and hanging from beams throughout. Lautner was also spotted at a Steelers game shaking hands with Ben Roethlisberger.

Pittsburgh’s rising status as Hollywood East does more than provide entertainment for local cinema junkies and provide traveling actors an ideal temporary home, though. The city’s influx of big budget films creates work opportunities for skilled workers and members of local unions. Director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, Dawn Keezer, explains that the film industry in Pittsburgh has made a positive impact on the local economy. “These films employ hundreds of people and support hundreds of local companies for their services,” she says. Keezer says that since the introduction of the film tax credit program in Pennsylvania, which provides tax incentives for productions shot in the state, membership for local union IATSE Local Union 489 (International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) has tripled.

“We never know the next project that is around the corner,” Keezer says. “What amazing story will be told in our neighborhoods, and what talent will call Pittsburgh home?
The film industry is very exciting for our region.”
Pittsburgh’s surge into the world of movies has become more and more apparent in the national spotlight. At last month’s MTV Movie Awards, the presence of Pittsburgh was undeniable. Between the on-stage antics of Mt. Lebanon native Joe Manganiello, and a new exclusive The Dark Knight Rises clip, it’s becoming evident that the city’s occupation of the movie industry is only on its first reel.

When the movie hits the big screen this month, viewers from all around the world will take mental snapshots of new places they want to visit — places we have the pleasure of seeing every day. The spot where Batman and Bane battle is in our backyard, and the city streets where bat-vehicles surely broke the speed limit are parts of our morning commutes.

During the awards, the trailer for Perks Of Being A Wallflower was debuted, and as Pittsburgh natives watched from all over, they got to see something held in the national spotlight that many experience on an average morning. Toward the end of the trailer, Lerman rides through the Fort Pitt Tunnels in the back of a black pickup truck, arms in the air, as Watson screams excitedly. As they pass through the tunnel, Pittsburgh’s night skyline is revealed, and millions of living rooms across the country got a glimpse of that “ta-da” moment we’ve experienced millions of times.
It won’t end there, though, and as more and more production crews move through town, we’ll be anxious to see Pittsburgh continuing to pop up on the silver screen.

Local crews aren’t the only workers benefitting from Pittsburgh’s cinematic surge — local actors and Pittsburgh residents looking for their big break or a chance to be an extra have a chance to see their face on the silver screen thanks to local casting agencies such as Nancy Mosser Casting. Mosser has been in business since 1990, and in the beginning, her business revolved mostly around television projects. Now, she says, the business is 10 times bigger, and she’s busier than she could have imagined.

Mosser casts extras and actors for local and national films, television shows, commercials, as well as corporate training tapes. “A lot of local actors get speaking parts in these films,” she says. “We just did Out of the Furnace with Christian Bale and there were about 10 or 12 local actors who had speaking parts, which is huge for them. It’s a really great acting town.”
Right now, Mosser and her staff are busy looking for actors and extras for Nickelodeon’s Supah Ninjas, which is the first season of a television show set to be shot in Pittsburgh. Casting director Katie Shenot recently spent time at a Pittsburgh CLO space casting martial artists and extras for the show.

The way it works is, when Mosser is hired to cast for a film, the director sends the agency a breakdown of each role that includes requests for certain looks and ages. Mosser then brings in actors through agents to read, and auditions are posted on an FTP site for directors to view. Once they’ve seen the auditions, actors are called back to read in front of directors.

When it comes to extras, Mosser holds open calls for specific projects, where candidates are photographed and then entered into the database so they can have them for the future. “It’s really fun because every time, you meet new people and then they end up doing more work,” she says. “We never turn anyone away. I might need a newborn baby tomorrow. I had to do a commercial where I needed an old guy who could bend over backwards. You just never know what you’re going to need.”
The ever-growing database is first place she looks when a new project comes along. “We need people that we can rely on that know what’s expected,” she says. “If we know that people have the look and are reliable, then we definitely call them first.”
 
With the list of projects in Pittsburgh continuing to grow, it seems that the sky is the limit for Mosser’s business in this city. Mosser says that the tax credit program certainly helps, but its not the only draw to the city. “The crews are so good here, too, coming from George Romero doing films here and teaching them the ropes,” she says. “A lot of them are still here. And there’s a lot of cooperation in the city. It’s hard to find that.”

For more information on Pittsburgh Filming go to Whirl Magazine.