OFF-CENTERPIECE : MOVIES : Former Steel Capital a Steal for Filmmakers

Director Tim Robbins is running behind an angry mob of New York City yuppies, urging them down Ross Street in this former steel capital, which could be the hottest film-location center in the Eastern Time Zone.

As a phalanx of New York City cops rush a man from 33rd Precinct headquarters into a waiting police car, the screaming yuppie vigilantes surround it, pound on it and rock it violently.

Once again 23-degree Pittsburgh is doing something it’s getting a reputation in Hollywood for being pretty good at--standing in for more expensive movie locales.

In this case the cheat is Manhattan, and Robbins is directing a scene for the highly politicized, pseudo-documentary he’s written about a successful right-wing folk singer who’s running for a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania in 1990.

Robbins, who also plays the main character, Bob Roberts, has described it as a satire with overtones of “This Is Spinal Tap” and “The Manchurian Candidate.” It will be titled either “Bob Roberts” or “Times Are Changing Back” and will be released next October during the presidential campaign.

Robbins isn’t the only star in town, or even the biggest. And he won’t be the last. Because friendly, photogenic, affordable Pittsburgh--- where “The Silence of the Lambs” was shot last year and where Danny DeVito and Jack Nicholson are coming in February to make a large chunk of “Hoffa”--has been discovered by Hollywood.

Between February, 1990, when the Pittsburgh Film Commission was born, and next spring, 22 theatrical and television movies will have been made in a city that was averaging fewer than two a year since 1981, when “Flashdance” was shot here.

In one week in early November, Robbins’ movie was one of five filming here simultaneously, including Nick Nolte and Susan Sarandon in “Lorenzo’s Oil” and Bob Hoskins in Disney’s “Passed Away.” Jeremy Irons was doing exteriors for “Waterland,” and Maureen Stapleton, Jack Warden and Blair Brown also were working here.

The parade of big names won’t end with DeVito and Nicholson either.

John Landis’ vampiress movie “Innocent Blood” begins production next month (with its original New York setting having been changed to Pittsburgh). And a Bruce Willis cop movie called “Three Rivers,” which was written about Pittsburgh by locally grown scriptwriter Roddy Harrington, is coming in the spring. Also, James Woods is due in mid-February to make “Citizen Cohn,” based on the life of right-wing bad boy Roy Cohn, for HBO.

Why the sudden movie boom in Pittsburgh? Robert Curran, the head of the film commission, says there are lots of reasons. No. 1, Pittsburgh is cheap. Location fees are low. Production money goes far, whether it’s paying for hotels and food, hiring extras or employing the city’s thriving population of experienced, non-union film workers.

The Hollywood grapevine is small, Curran says, and Pittsburgh has been getting good word of mouth in the industry as a city where movies are enjoyable and convenient to make and where budgets can be met. George Romero, who’s been based in Pittsburgh his whole career and shot “The Dark Half” with Timothy Hutton here last year, has seen his secret exposed.

Pittsburgh’s well-preserved neighborhoods, stately old buildings and post-industrial funkiness are impressive selling points. So is the government cooperation. Plus, producers love the area’s wide variety of easy-to-reach locales that have stood in for everything from small-town Ohio in “The Silence of the Lambs” to turn-of-the-century Los Angeles courtrooms in PBS’ “Darrow.”

The opening of the Pittsburgh Film Commission office hasn’t caused the boom, Curran says. But it has abetted it by serving as an efficient, one-stop shopping spot that can provide Hollywood with whatever information it needs, from crew lists to location photos.

Forrest Murray, the producer of Robbins’ sub-$4-million movie, is so happy with affordable Pittsburgh that he’s scheming to himself out loud about wanting to produce a TV series here someday.

“Everything’s been better than I expected,” the Venice, Calif., resident says, shivering in a doorway watching Robbins direct the yuppie vigilantes.

Murray is pleased with the crew, two-thirds of which he hired locally. A Nation magazine subscriber and himself a member of two unions, he makes no apologies that “Bob Roberts” is not a union-made movie.

He’s paying what amounts to union scale, but union work rules would probably force him to have a larger staff, he says. “We couldn’t make our movie if it were forced into being a union shoot.”

Because Pittsburgh is not within the jurisdiction of the Screen Actors Guild, Murray can use non-SAG extras. That, along with the fact that all of the actors are working for scale, “is one of the real reasons we can be here,” he says.

“If I had to pay real Screen Actors Guild extras rates, I couldn’t make the movie. I’m paying here basically minimum wage for extras--$4 an hour, $40 a day. A Screen Actors Guild extra would get about $125 a day. I’ll end up using 1,800 man-days with extras, and that adds up to a big number. That would blow me out of the water.”

Murray’s bottom-line-based brainstorms include advertising for--and getting--400 extras in black-tie and gowns to pay $75 for a chance to be in a ballroom scene. He and Robbins dreamed up the scheme to save money and to benefit Pittsburgh public television station WQED, which recruited its best-heeled contributors and will receive all the proceeds.

With mega-budget “Hoffa” on its way here, negotiations are going on among union officials who want to unionize local film technical crews and artisans. The struggle is over whether the union would be controlled by Pittsburghers or out-of-towners who would be less willing to be flexible in dealing with producers who come here. Whether a union will scare Hollywood away from Pittsburgh to Cincinnati or Canada or Mexico remains to be seen.