By Barbara Vancheri / Sunday afternoon,
Sept. 7, 2008
TORONTO - Kevin Smith turns Pittsburgh into an unlikely porn capital, Seth Rogen and Elizabeth Banks (left) into racy romcom stars, Brandon Routh into a sexy superman and one of George Romero's old haunts into a location for "Zack and Miri Make a Porno."
"We got to shoot at the Monroeville Mall and for a movie buff, that's a very cool thing. We had [actor] Tom Savini, we shot at the Monroeville Mall, it's as close to a zombie movie as I'll ever get," he told reporters today as festivalgoers got their first peek at "Zack and Miri." Zombies, after all, famously shuffled through the mall in "Dawn of the Dead."
Smith says at its core, "Zack and Miri" is a romcom, although not a conventional or family-friendly one. The MPAA initially gave it an NC-17 until Smith won an R, on appeal.
"Remove the trappings of porno and it's a traditional romcom. ... I'm an unabashed romcom fan, I just like my romcoms to be a little more risque than ‘27 Dresses' or ‘Made of Honor' or something like that. Not that there's anything wrong with those," but he likes his movies a little more, uh, edgy and adult.
In "Zack and Miri," Rogen and Banks play platonic (but made for each other) roomies and graduates of Monroeville High School who are so broke that their water and electricity are turned off the day before Thanksgiving. As they burn their stack of unpaid bills in a trash can in the living room, which in a nice touch is decorated with afghans draped over the furniture, they make a business decision about how they can raise money. They're inspired by a gay porn star involved with a former classmate.
Pittsburgh plays itself and the first time you see Banks, she's wearing fuzzy blue slippers and a blue Pittsburgh Penguins jersey.
Banks, who also did interviews for the movie today, calls Pittsburgh a character in the movie and says it was smart of Smith to shoot "Zack and Miri" there. "Look, if you lose your heat in the summer, there's not really high stakes," as there are here.
"And I also think it's really fun that Kevin set the hilarity of the movie against this backdrop of just gray desolation, and everything's frigid and frozen and meanwhile, we have all this life in us and I thought it adds a texture to the movie that some of Kevin's other movies don't have."
The cast also includes Justin Long, Traci Lords, Jason Mewes, Craig Robinson from "The Office" and adult film star Katie Morgan.
It's too early to tell how the movie will play in Pittsburgh or Peoria, but some Kansas City residents gave it a stamp of approval.
"We screened ‘Clerks II' there, last time we were test screening and it was a great screening and it's totally indicative of the middle of the country," Smith said. "It was a killer test screening."
Pittsburghers will get their chance to see "Zack and Miri" on Halloween.
Posted
Sep 07 2008, 08:14 PM
by
Sharon Eberson