My Tale of Two Cities: A Comeback Story
By Carl Kurlander
Who knew that returning to Pittsburgh could lead one to become a guest on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," much less inspire an entire feature film about coming home and about one of America's great cities re-inventing itself for a new age?
Illustration by Patrick Neil
In January 2003, after moving to Pittsburgh, my wife, Natalie, and I found ourselves on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in a program about people who had changed their lives. Two years earlier, we were living the Hollywood life, with neighbors such as Richard Simmons, David Schwimmer and "Bud Bundy," when I received a job offer to teach screenwriting at the University of Pittsburgh. (Two decades earlier, I had left Pittsburgh, having won an internship to Universal Studios after writing a short story about a Pittsburgh girl I had been infatuated with working at the St. Elmo Hotel in Chautauqua, N.Y., which eventually inspired the movie St. Elmo's Fire.)
We initially thought our move would just be for a year, but then a funny thing happened - we discovered we loved living in Pittsburgh. When we were leaving Los Angeles, our Beverly Hills pediatrician had recommended we read one book to our daughter to smooth the transition - Mister Rogers' Moving. She had no idea that Fred Rogers actually lived in the neighborhood where we would be moving or that he taped all his programs just a few blocks away. As we introduced our daughter, Campbell, to her new pre-school teacher, Mimsie Leyton, we sensed something familiar about her. A few days later we realized she was the woman on the cover of the book.
We spent that first year as a family kicking fall leaves, getting to know our neighbors, who, unlike those in L.A., actually seemed to know our names. We did things I had forgotten how much I loved as a kid - flying kites on Flagstaff Hill, seeing dinosaurs at Carnegie Museum of Natural History and going to Kennywood. It turned out I also loved teaching my Pitt students, who had all the wonder I recalled having when I first started out.
Left: Kurlander (center) speaks with Steelers great Franco Harris and Harris' son, entrepreneur Dok Harris, about attracting and retaining young talent during the filming of "My Tale of Two Cities."
But, perhaps, it is a curse to tell Oprah that you are happy. Because just as I described how fulfilling our life was in literally "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," Pittsburgh's favorite neighbor, Fred Rogers, passed away. Then, later that same year, Pittsburgh, which 100 years ago had been one of the richest cities in the world, declared itself "financially distressed." In an effort to help our hometown, my neighbor Ellen Weiss Kander and I - along with various leaders of the city - brought together many of the region's most illustrious film and television luminaries to Mister Rogers' old studio with the idea of building on Fred's legacy and helping Pittsburgh economically by developing an entertainment industry here. Among those who participated were director Rob Marshall (Chicago), manager Eric Gold (Jim Carrey), "Ellen" writer/producer Maxine Lapiduss, producer Bernie Goldmann (300) and "Lizzie Maguire" creator Terri Minsky.
However, funding for the Steeltown Entertainment Project was slow in coming. Then one day my dermatologist and neighbor, Doug Kress, suggested I go ahead and make a movie to help the city, showing everyone how I felt about Pittsburgh and its great potential. He even offered to help finance it. Still unsure of what this movie would be, I talked to cameraman Mark Knobil, one of the best cinematographers around, who had started on "MRN," even going with Fred to Russia.
As we started, my producing partner, Stephanie Dangel, often referred to the movie as not a Roger & Me - a documentary directed by Michael Moore that looks at who is to blame for the hard times in Flint, Mich. - but a Mister Rogers & Me, in which we would discover many neighbors who might be part of Pittsburgh's successful comeback.
We ended up shopping for cheese in the Strip District with Teresa Heinz Kerry as she talked about how "we need an infusion of dreamers... because dreaming is contagious"; tossing a football on the North Side with Franco Harris and his son, Dok, who had come back home from Washington, D.C., to go to business and law school; and eating breakfast with former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill at Ritters' Diner, where he had gone each morning at 5:30 while CEO of Alcoa. O'Neill knew something about comebacks, having turned that old-school company around as so many other businesses were leaving the city.
We walked dogs with transplant pioneer Dr. Thomas Starzl, made pottery with Manchester Craftsmen's Guild President Bill Strickland and listened in on a lecture by historian David McCullough on "The Rich History of Pittsburgh, as a Lens to View all U.S. History." We asked Pittsburghers at folk festivals and tailgate parties how this city, which had built America with its steel, conquered polio and invented everything from the aluminum industry to the Big Mac, could re-invent itself for a new age and once again become "The City of Champions."
The film's title, My Tale of Two Cities, originally referred to the old versus new Pittsburgh, but it also ended up dealing with the differences between living in L.A. versus here. In exploring whether you can "go home again," we visited my old gym teacher, Mr. Grandizio, and the girl I had a crush on who had inspired St. Elmo's Fire, Lynn Snyderman, and we went back to the apartment I had grown up in above what is now Athlete's Foot on Walnut Street in Shadyside with my mother and brother, Tom.
For the end of the movie, I envisioned the entire town singing Fred Rogers' theme song, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" similar to Chicago singing "Twist and Shout" in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. It was just a fantasy - until one of Fred's friends, Anne Lewis, encouraged me to do it. Then Pittsburgh Post-Gazette drama critic Chris Rawson suggested I was thinking too small and that we get all the Pittsburghers from Broadway to sing it in Times Square. To my amazement, more than 200 Pittsburghers showed up. We then ended up singing in L.A. with another 200 Pittsburghers in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
But it was the day that we sang "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" at The Point that I'll never forget. I had no idea how many would show up on a hot summer's day where the three rivers meet. But there they were - hundreds of my Pittsburgh neighbors - including Joanne Rogers; Cyril Wecht; Franco and Dok; Patty Pearce, the owner of a Blawnox lingerie shop who had turned "The Terrible Towel" into lingerie; former political rivals Dan Onorato and Jim Roddey, who had told us how - like the two rivers merged into one - when we are in trouble, Pittsburghers often come together to solve problems; and Sister Linda Yankoski, a nun whom we'd spoken to about "whether Pittsburgh needed saving."
The moment that stays with me most is when, just before we were about to film with an all-star band led by former Rusted Root band member Jim Dispirito, Mayor Bob O' Connor showed up - apologizing for almost missing the event - but explaining he had just come from an Italian wedding. Bob popped up all through the making of our movie as a great champion of the city, and My Tale of Two Cities is dedicated to him.
One of the first interviews for the film we did was with Joanne Rogers in front of "the famous tree" in "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Joanne talked about how when she and Fred first got married, they came back from New York, where he was working as a floor manager at NBC, with the dream of doing something positive with the new medium - television. As we spoke with David Newell (Mr. McFeely on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood"), he related how people at the time thought Fred was crazy for moving to Pittsburgh, especially since "they were mining gold" in New York with the programs there.
Left: Filmmaker Carl Kurlander, with his daughter, Campbell, join a cast of Pittsburghers who gathered to sing "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" at the Point in July 2006. Photo by Peter Slosson
On stage in the studio where he and Fred had filmed so many programs, David spoke about how for years, as McFeely, he delivered tapes to Fred about things made in Pittsburgh - many of which are no longer made here. When I asked David what we, as a community, could make now, he said, "Perhaps this movie could help turn Pittsburgh around... you never know." I was amazed at his optimism. "That's what is going to turn Pittsburgh around - some optimism," he said.
That day at The Point, surrounded by all those neighbors, Mr. McFeely led the crowd in singing our city's unofficial theme song, "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" I had no choice but to believe him.
Pittsburghers everywhere are invited to come home this Thanksgiving weekend for a special red-carpet screening of My Tale of Two Cities on Fri., Nov. 28, at the Byham Theater, downtown, as part of the city's Homecoming Weekend and the end cap of its 250th-birthday celebration. The evening will benefit Steeltown Entertainment Project's "Youth & Media Initiative" in partnership with Holy Family Institute, which for more than a century has provided a nurturing environment for young people in the Pittsburgh area facing challenging family situations. (Visit steeltown.org for tickets and mytaleoftwocities.com to see clips from the movie.)
Carl Kurlander is a Visiting Distinguished Senior Lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh. He has also worked in Hollywood for more than two decades as a screenwriter (St. Elmo's Fire) and television writer/producer ("Saved by the Bell"). His journey back to Pittsburgh from Hollywood was chronicled in Po Bronson's best-selling What Should I Do With My Life? He is a co-founder of the Steeltown Entertainment Project.