10 movie favorites starring Pittsburgh

What makes Pittsburgh such an attractive movie location?

Tax credits for film companies are just the beginning, says Dawn Keezer, director of the Pittsburgh Film Office.

“We have such a diversity of locations. Pittsburgh can look like any place in the world,” she says. “The only things we don’t have are a beach and a desert.

“We do New York better than New York,” she says. “We’ve been San Francisco, Paris, Ukraine and Atlanta.”

There’s the beauty of the city viewed from the West End Overlook or Mt. Washington and downtown’s blend of modern and historical architecture, she says. Drive for an hour and you have mountains, small towns, farmland and other attractive settings.

The city also does a great job of accommodating movie-makers, in logistics such as closing down streets, Keezer says. And Pittsburghers themselves provide a warm welcome to everyone from the stars to the crew.

Fond favorites

Keezer says one of her favorite homegrown movies is “Flashdance,” the 1983 romantic drama starring Jennifer Beals as a steelworker who aspires to be a professional ballet dancer: “It’s so much fun, and it’s quintessential Pittsburgh.”

She also has a fondness for the two best picture Oscar winners, “The Deer Hunter” and “Silence of the Lambs.”

“Deer Hunter” also is a favorite of Alyssa Bruno Walls, a local actor who portrays Rosie the Riveter and is musical director for Leechburg Area School District.

“Every time I look at Meryl Streep in that movie, I see my mom when she married my dad,” she says. “She used to get told she looked like (Streep) all of the time.”

Jeanne-Claude Van Damme’s 1995 action-thriller, “Sudden Death,” ranks high with Tony Marino, co-founder of Stage Right in Greensburg, “because I’m in it.”

Marino also likes “Won’t Back Down,” because it’s his son Anthony’s first professional film credit. The 2012 release stars Viola Davis and Holly Hunter as mothers trying to save a failing Pittsburgh inner-city school.

Being “old school,” Greensburg actor and mediations attorney John Noble says “1978’s frightful post-Vietnam era ‘The Deer Hunter’ tops the list with the ever-so-youthful Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep.” He also likes “Flashdance” and “Sudden Death” for his friend and fellow entertainer Marino’s cameo as a popcorn vendor.

Noble, founder of Westmoreland Night of the Stars, also gives an honorable mention to “Striking Distance,” from 1993 with Bruce Willis and Sarah Jessica Parker.

“Not a great movie, but beautiful river views of the city,” he says.

Quite a lot of films

In her 26 years at the film office, Keezer says, there have been more that 250 film projects in the city.

“We did have a partnership with Giant Eagle Video (remember when we rented videos and DVDs in store?),” she says. “They created a ‘Filmed in Pittsburgh’ label and marked all the made-in-Pittsburgh films with the label. They had also created a brochure that you could take and check off the Pittsburgh films you had seen.

“It was a fun idea and helped them rent more videos and get the Pittsburgh-made films more attention,” she says.

Now, the film office website has a page listing them, both theater releases and movies made for television and streaming.

That’s are lots of options for a weekend Pittsburgh movie marathon, if winter weather or social distancing demands one.

Following are 10 suggested movies, in chronological order of release, chosen not for artistic merit or awards earned, but solely for the spotlight they put on the city itself. Get a snack and a cold drink, queue them up and see how many iconic Pittsburgh locations you can identify.

‘Flashdance’

Though many scenes were filmed in Los Angeles, there’s enough of the Steel City to make it a Pittsburgh movie. Don’t forget, she’s a steelworker, and there are plenty of on-the-job scenes.

Beals’ character bikes across the Smithfield Bridge from her home in Fineview. She visits her mentor’s home at 2100 Sidney St. in the South Side Flats.

Panicking at an audition set in the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, she flees through the adjoining Hall of Sculpture, and she hugs her boyfriend on a leaf-strewn sidewalk outside. Viewers get iconic city views as she takes a ride on the Duquesne Incline.

‘Striking Distance’

Willis stars as a Pittsburgh homicide detective on the outs with his fellow officers as he pursues a serial killer called the Polish Hill Strangler. The thriller originally was called “Three Rivers.” How Pittsburgh is that?

The Strangler leads Willis and his fellow-cop father on a chase filmed on Bigelow Boulevard, Mount Troy Hill Road, Ridgeway Street, the Armstrong Tunnel and a maze of Downtown streets. Watch for the collision of a Port Authority bus and an Iron City Beer truck.

Other locations included Pittsburgh City Hall, Point State Park, Allegheny County Courthouse, Mt. Washington and Neville Island, along with nearby Duquesne, Elizabeth, Monessen and Natrona.

‘Inspector Gadget’

It’s called Riverton City in the 1999 movie, but it’s unmistakably Pittsburgh. Starring as the bumbling sleuth, Matthew Broderick lives in the South Side Slopes, at the corner of St. Leo and Roscoe streets, and flies his Go Go Gadget Copter over Liberty Avenue.

There also are aerial shots of Downtown’s Stanwix Street, Forbes Avenue, Wood Street and the Boulevard of the Allies. The Sixth Street (Roberto Clemente) Bridge has a prominent role, as does PPG Plaza, and Point State Park also makes an appearance.

‘Wonder Boys’

Anyone who has trod Pittsburgh’s hallowed halls of academe will recognize numerous Carnegie Mellon University locations in the 2000 adaptation of Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon’s novel. Michael Douglas plays an English professor plagued by addiction, writer’s block and questionable romantic choices in the dark comedy with an unexpectedly sweet ending.

The Burgh’s bridges are a recurring motif, and locations include Friendship and the campuses of Shady Side Academy and Chatham University. Thousands of pages of the only copy of Douglas’ never-completed novel end up scattered along the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver.

Fun fact: Chabon, who studied at CMU and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, gave the Bellefield Boiler Plant in Oakland its enduring nickname, “the Cloud Factory,” in his 1984 debut novel, “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.”

‘Adventureland’

The 2009 coming-of-age comedy starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristin Stewart was mostly filmed at Kennywood in West Mifflin. Most of the scenes take place in the games area, where the characters work, but the Phantom’s Revenge roller coaster can be spotted in several shots, along with the vintage wooden coasters Thunderbolt, Racer and Jack Rabbit.

Something of a box-office dud when it was released, the movie has since developed a cult following.

‘Jack Reacher’

It’s worth watching just for the sight of megastar Tom Cruise boarding a PAT bus, if not for the dizzying chase with Cruise going the wrong way through the Armstrong Tunnel at the wheel of a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle.

Filmed entirely in Pittsburgh, the 2012 movie tracks Cruise as a former Army investigator, now an enigmatic drifter, on the trail of a sniper firing across the Allegheny River to pick off victims on the Riverfront Walk near PNC Park. The hunt also takes him to the South Side Slopes, Strip District and Sewickley.

‘The Dark Knight Rises’

Batman comes out of exile in the 2012 movie to save Gotham City from ultra-villain Bane. The prison breakout and brawl scene between police officers and escaped prisoners was set at Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute and the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research.

Heinz Field is destroyed digitally as Bane sets off underground bombs across Gotham that cause the field to collapse, as former Steelers star Hines Ward runs for his life — and returns a kickoff for a touchdown in the process. Pittsburghers will spy other Steelers on the sidelines (and chuckle at the name on the kicker’s jersey.)

‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’

A socially awkward teen is drawn into the orbit of two free-spirited, charismatic classmates who teach him the joys of friendship and music, while a teacher helps him develop his love of writing.

The iconic scene in this 2012 movie is a ride through the Fort Pitt Tunnel heading toward the nighttime view of downtown, as Emma Watson’s character stands in the back of a pickup with arms outstretched as David Bowie’s “Heroes” blasts from the radio — a deed the protagonist repeats in the final scene.

Settings also include Peters Township High School in McMurray, the Hollywood Theater in Dormont and King’s Family Restaurant in Upper St. Clair.

‘Fences’

A home on Anaheim Street in the Hill District was the setting for the 2016 film adaptation of Pittsburgh-born playwright August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. A working-class African-American man’s struggles with his own lost opportunities lead him to dash his son’s hopes for a football career.

Set in 1957, the tense family drama commands authenticity by using artifacts from iconic Hill District venues like the Pittsburgh Courier and the Granville Hotel Bar & Grill. Scenes also were shot in the West End, at the Allegheny County Courthouse and in Oakland. The top of downtown’s Gulf Tower is seen in the background of certain scenes.

‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’

Thank those tax credits for the 2019 movie about Fred Rogers being filmed largely in Pittsburgh, Keezer told the Tribune-Review in 2019. She and others championed the cause, making sure that the movie about Western Pennsylvania’s favorite neighbor, played by Tom Hanks, was filmed in his old stomping grounds.

Scenes were shot in WQED’s Oakland studios where “Mister Roger’s Neighborhood” was filmed, and also in the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill, where Rogers worked out. Other locations included the downtown William Penn Hotel, Port Authority Bus Terminal and a Chinese restaurant.

Extras in the restaurant scene were real-life residents of Roger’s neighborhood, including his widow, the late Joanne Rogers; producers Bill Isler, Hedda Sharapan and Margaret Whitmer; and David Newell, who portrayed Mr. McFeely.