In the first scenes of The Curve, the camera moves in a panoramic shot from Mudd Hall, past Macaulay, up the stairs and through the breezeway between Remsen and Mergenthaler, and on to the upper quad for a long distance view of Shriver.
The movie supposedly takes place at Harvard, and the credits acknowledge only Towson University. But to anyone who knows Johns Hopkins, it's evident that the 1998 movie, starring Matt Lillard of Scream and Felicity's Keri Russell, was filmed in large part on the Homewood campus.
The Curve isn't Hopkins's only brush with fame. Chris Rock's 2003 movie Head of State features a scene with the comedian himself delivering a speech on the steps of Shriver Hall. But most people don't realize that these scenes are not isolated events.
Hollywood has come to Baltimore in a big way; more than any of its residents might realize. More and more studios are choosing sites in Maryland -- and in the city specifically -- for filming large productions, and they are bringing huge stars along with them.
John Waters, Baltimore's king of inventive cinema, filmed A Dirty Shame here in the fall. The movie features Tracey Ullman, Chris Isaac and Johnny Knoxville, according to Jack Gerbes, director of the Maryland Film Office. With locally based movies such as Hairspray, Pecker and Cecil B. Demented to his credit, Waters is Baltimore's most recognizable Hollywood icon.
The writer/director is undoubtedly a hometown hero for his big screen portrayal of the city. Film projects in Baltimore, though, have grown far beyond the scope of John Waters and Barry Levinson, Charm City's other cinematic son. Like Waters, Levinson grew up in Baltimore and bases many of his movies, such as Diner and Liberty Heights, here.
But the city has become a silver screen favorite in its own right. Beauty Shop, written and directed by Tim Story of Barbershop and Barbershop II fame, was also filmed here in the fall. Production headquarters for Beauty Shop was in Hampden.
This past summer, John Travolta (Grease), Joaquin Phoenix (Gladiator) and Robert Patrick (Terminator 2) were in town filming Ladder 49, an action drama about firefighters in Baltimore. The movie featured over 500 local extras, 225 of which were actual firefighters. City mayor Martin O'Malley made an appearance in the film, playing, unsurprisingly, the mayor of Baltimore. His performance earned him membership in the Screen Actors Guild (SAG). There are over 1,400 other members of SAG in Maryland.
"For Ladder 49," Gerbes explained, "we were able to find the locations and convince the director" that he would be able to realize his vision in Baltimore. The 2003 movies Head of State and Gods and Generals, starring Jeff Daniels from Dumb and Dumber, based their productions in the city.
The popular HBO series The Wire is also filmed in Baltimore, as were all nine seasons of the CBS hit Homicide: Life on the Streets. The state estimates that filming -- including movies, television shows and commercials -- brought $64.5 million to the state economy in 2002 alone. The Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel made almost $2 million from filmmakers that same year. So many production companies are interested in Baltimore as a filming location that the state made an estimated $100 million in 2003 from local filming.
These movies are not small indie projects, either. Scenes from Red Dragon, the 2002 prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, were filmed at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) and The Baltimore Sun building. The movie, which starred Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton and Ralph Fiennes, enlisted both preservationists at the BMA and art history students from Hopkins for help on the set.
Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman were here that same year shooting The Sum of All Fears in Baltimore and around the state. The director of Ladder 49, Jay Russell, also filmed parts of his 2002 movie Tuck Everlasting in Harford County. The movie made use of the same run down house that was used in Beloved, starring Oprah Winfrey.
As a response in part to the booming movie industry in the state, two large-scale film festivals have sprung up in Maryland in recent years. Each October, Baltimore hosts MicroCineFest, a premier underground film festival. Founded in 1997, the festival exclusively shows "ambitious, creative, daring, do-it-yourself, low-budget, offbeat, original, psychotronic, sub-stream, underground films and videos from all over the world," according to microcinefest.org. The entire span of films is shown at The G-Spot in Hampden. All of the movies at MicroCineFest have an inventive, unusual quality about them. You won't see any reality-based dramas to be shown at an ordinary movie theatre here.
For larger, more mainstream movies, the Maryland Film Festival is an ideal venue. The festival, which is in its fifth year, takes place every May and, of course, usually devotes a large amount of time to the filmography of John Waters. Both of these festivals not only highlight smaller films, they also place a spotlight on the city, which in turn attracts other moviemakers.
In order to bring more productions to the area, says Jack Gerbes, the Maryland Film Office actively pursues directors. "There is a lot of competition for film dollars from different states, different countries," he said. "We have to be proactive, go after projects... It's nice when a film is made in Maryland and it has box office success," Gerbes explained.
The film office doesn't look specifically for big-budget films. "Big or small, they all add up. We can't pick and choose," said Gerbes. The Maryland Film Office also acts as a liaison between the production and the city, finding local crews and equipment suppliers. The state also offers a 5 percent tax break to production houses in an attempt to bring in more film revenues.Even though Baltimore has recently come into the spotlight as a location for huge Hollywood productions, moviemaking is not new to the area.
The first movie filmed in Maryland was the 1898 documentary Admiral Cervera and Officers of the Spanish Fleet. Since then, over 150 movies and television shows have been filmed in the state, according to the Internet Movie Database.
Big stars have spent time in movie trailers in and around Baltimore ever since the movies have been around to make big stars. In 1945, Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra filmed Anchors Aweigh in Annapolis.
And more recently, Morgan Freeman filmed three movies in Baltimore and around Maryland, as have Julia Roberts and Gene Hackman. Bruce Willis, Al Pacino, Robert Downey, Jr., and Kevin Bacon have each filmed two movies in Baltimore.
So next time you're walking down the street and see a guy that looks just like Ben Stiller, Brad Pitt or Billy Murray, don't feel bad about doing a double take. It just might be him.
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