Who's Your (Movie) City?

A few years back, when I met Lord of the Rings and King Kong director Peter Jackson at his Wellington, New Zealand film complex, I asked who his influences were. Without skipping a beat, he said the great Pittsburgh director, George Romero. Jackson told me was a huge fan Romero and slasher films and in fact started out in that genre.  Check out this interview with Romeo over at A.V. Club. (H/T: Seth Ditchick).

AVC: You're no longer a Pittsburgh resident, are you?

GR: No, I'm not. I still own a place there, but I've been living in Toronto for the past three and a half years.

AVC: You're so closely identified with Pittsburgh. Why did you leave?

GR: What happened in Pittsburgh was, for a while there, it looked like it was going to become a production center. The city was talking about building stages and stuff, because man, there were a couple of $400 million years. Everybody was shooting in Pittsburgh. Silence Of The Lambs… I mean, big movies were coming there to shoot. I came up there with a bunch of media people I grew up with and learned with, a bunch of friends, and we all started on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood together, because that was the only game in town. Then we made some films. But what really kicked Pittsburgh off was a movie called Flashdance that shot there, and made Hollywood discover Pittsburgh. Beautiful city, tremendously diverse. I mean, you could make it look like the 1800s, like Mrs. Soffel, or you could make it double New York. And you get 15 minutes out of town and you're in the mountains or in farm country. So there were a lot of advantages to shooting there, and it was very friendly to producers.

But all of a sudden it dried up! I was used to working with friends and a sort of family of colleagues, and everybody moved away in order to get work. So that was one of the reasons I left. And then the first film that we shot in Canada, Bruiser, we had a limited budget, but in Canada, we were able to get 20 percent extra on the dollar. So we went to shoot there, and I just fell in love with it. Fell in love with the crews, and just loved working there. So when we did Land Of The Dead, we went back, firmed up some relationships with people that we'd worked with before, and it was terrific. Again, sort of having a family of people that you really enjoy working with. It's no longer as economic, because I think the Canadian dollar is now stronger than ours—or at least it was a few days ago—so there aren't those advantages. But I just love working there."

Comments

[Alison]

Fred Rogers came to Toronto in 1963 to work at the CBC. While here, he developed Mister Rogers. He returned to Pittsburgh a year later. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/R/htmlR/rogersfred/rogersfred.htm

His friend, Ernie Coombs, came with him and stayed. He became the most beloved of CBC charachters, Mr. Dressup. http://www.cbc.ca/lifeandtimes/coombs.html

The production ties between the cities go back a long way.

[Wendy]

We may be entering an era when the Canadian film makers head to the US, perhaps bringing ideas with them on producing films -- a different kind of cross-border collaboration than what we've seen the past 20 years. (A friend is an Art Director and has been offered a job on a Canadian movie that will shoot in Vancouver and Los Angeles, for example. )