So much to see in
Philmadelphia starburst

By Diane Villano-Prokop
Times Staff Writer

Touring Philadelphia isn’t just learning about what happened 231 years ago, when men in three-cornered hats established a nation.
Thanks to the Philadelphia in the Movies Tour, a visit to Center City — whether it’s your first trip or your millionth — is now hip and happening.
So leave your comfy walking shoes at home and hop on the brand-new, air-conditioned luxury minibus with a large high-definition plasma screen and enjoy more than a little pop culture.
The two-and-a-half-hour journey takes you to 60 sites around Olde City, the Parkway, Fairmount, Rittenhouse, the Avenue of the Arts, South Philly and the Italian Market, supplemented by 40 actual film clips from 23 movies.
They are largely sites immortalized in film. And not to worry . . . a Philly film tour would not be complete without the chance for your very own Rocky run up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
"No other city’s sightseeing tour takes you this far and wide," said Mark Beyerle, the principal owner of Specialty Tourism Events, the licensed operator of the Philadelphia in the Movies tour.
The bus departs from the Independence Visitors Center, at Sixth and Market streets, and heads to Independence Hall, where a high-energy clip from National Treasure, starring Nicolas Cage, is shown.
The 2004 Disney flick represented the first time that the National Park Service allowed the interior of the Independence Hall clock tower to be filmed.
"You’re here watching the clip in front of the very spot," said Nicole Ross, marketing manager for the Greater Philadelphia Film Office, which both entices and helps production companies to shoot films at Philly locales and around southeastern Pennsylvania.
On the tour, you’ll see clips of actors who have come back to Philadelphia more than once to appear in locally shot movies, including Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Bruce Willis and Mark Wahlberg, who portrayed former Eagles football player Vince Papale in last year’s Invincible.
Wahlberg, 35, also filmed the 2003 flick The Italian Job, and this year’s Shooter, an action film about a marksman framed for an attempt on the president’s life, in Philadelphia. He’ll return in August to star in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, about a family trying to survive an environmental disaster.
But famous actors aren’t the only "stars" on the tour.
Beyerle loves to point out the manhole cover in front of City Hall — Bruce Willis emerged from it during a post-apocalyptic scene in the mid-’90s movie Twelve Monkeys.
"My favorite thing is to get people excited about a manhole cover," Beyerle said.
Ross, the film office marketing exec, similarly believes that little things mean a lot. "You can never pass these locations again without thinking of them," Ross said of their movie significance.
Saturday will kick off the first full season of the film tour — it’ll be offered on Saturdays for 22 weeks. Private excursions are also available.
The maiden tours took place from July to October last year. The experience made preparing this year’s tour a lot easier. "We understood it — how people reacted to it and what they loved," Ross explained.
The way she describes it, "serendipity" helped bring the film tour to life. The Greater Philadelphia Film Office had put on a tour for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. when the 2000 Republican National Convention was in town, offering travel writers a chance to write about something other than politics.
Tours also were offered as novel auction items for charity events. The Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau then approached the office to suggest marketing the offbeat tour to groups.
The lightbulb moment flashed in 2005, the 20th anniversary of the film Witness.
"We saw the mileage that Lancaster was getting from this one film twenty years ago," Beyerle said of the Harrison Ford thriller about an Amish child who witnesses a murder in a bathroom at 30th Street Station.
"We have more than two-hundred feature films made in the area since 1992," Ross chimed in.
In fact, she noted, filmmaking is among the city’s top 10 industries and has brought $1.75 billion to Philadelphia since 1992. The Greater Philadelphia Film Office has been a critical link to that business since its start 22 years ago.
Even with a rich library of material, it took more than a good tour concept to actually get the show on the road.
"We found out we needed to clear clips with the legal offices of the studios and then clear the likeness of each actor, then if turned down, put in rebuttal requests . . . it was three months of solid back and forth," Ross recalled.
The film office then met with Specialty Tourism Events, which operates the tours for the agency. "The film office is in the business of economic development. We’re in the business of operating tours," Beyerle said.
His company also offers sightseeing tours, evening entertainment outings, restaurant dining tours and treasure/scavenger hunts, among other activities.
Tour organizers ventured across the city themselves for four hours at a time, scouting out locations, and eventually crafted a 32-page script as the foundation for each tour. Actor/tour guides were auditioned and hired, and the organizers also scoured more than 44 hours of film in their search for a strong collection of 12-second clips to showcase Philadelphia — as a movie wonderland.
City Hall, the Italian and Reading Terminal markets, and the Fourth Street Deli may be easily recognized Philadelphia landmarks, but with the magic of filmmaking, North Third Street can become 1860s Cincinnati, as it did for the 1998 Jonathan Demme film Beloved.
"We have enough architectural variety that we can simulate any city," Beyerle said. "That’s the benefit (of filming here). You can go city to country in thirty minutes."
Those who have taken the tour, he said, did so for entertainment but walked away educated and wanting to go home and watch the movies again.
"With a renewed sense of pride in the city," Ross said. ••
Reporter Diane Villano-Prokop can be reached at 215-354-3036 or dvillano@phillynews.com

Let’s roll ’em . . .

The Philadelphia in the Movies Tour is offered every Saturday at 10 a.m. Boarding time is at 9:45, with the tour bus departing from the Independence Visitors Center at Sixth and Market streets.
Tickets are $35 for adults, and $30 for senior citizens (65 and older) and children under 12. Purchase tickets online at www.TourSignUp.com/movie
For more information, call 215-686-3663 or send e-mail to info@TourSignUp.com

And the pick flicks are . . .

Among the many films that have done shooting in Philadelphia, here are some notables — and locales that made the final cut:
• Philadelphia (1993) — Jonathan Demme’s Oscar-winning film about a skilled corporate attorney (Tom Hanks) faced with AIDS discrimination features many locations throughout Philadelphia, including City Hall.
• Twelve Monkeys (1995) — The apocalyptic/time travel thriller starring Bruce Willis features the Pennsylvania Convention Center, Eastern State Penitentiary and the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, among other locations.
• Blow Out (1981) — Brian De Palma’s artsy movie of mystery and intrigue, with John Travolta as a sound-effects man at a trashy Philly movie studio, features a Mummers Parade and the Fourth of July celebration at Penn’s Landing.
• Clean and Sober (1988) — Michael Keaton is a shrewd real estate agent with a cocaine problem in this film, with locations that include the Rohm & Haas Building at Sixth and Market streets.
• Witness (1985) — Perhaps its most memorable scene was filmed in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, where a timid Amish boy happens to witness a murder in a bathroom.
• Sixth Sense (1999) — Haley Joel Osment sees plenty of dead people in this supernatural tale, which features Boathouse Row and the streets of Center City. Osment’s character lives on the 2300 block of St. Alban’s Place.
• Trading Places (1983) — The Eddie Murphy/Dan Aykroyd comedy filmed heavily in Philly, including Rittenhouse Square and the steps of the Curtis Institute of Music.
• Mannequin (1987) and Mannequin II (1991) — The romantic comedy — a struggling artist creates a department store mannequin that comes to life — filmed in the Lord and Taylor department store (formerly John Wanamaker’s) at 13th and Market streets. ••