When you’re watching the long-anticipated thriller “State of Play,” you’ll likely pick out stars Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams, but there are more than a few Washington, D.C., notables you’ll want to see.
Perhaps one of the best known is Maurice Harcum, day manager of Ben’s Chili Bowl on U Street in Northwest Washington. He nabbed a coveted speaking role with Crowe, who plays the intrepid investigative journalist in the movie opening today.
“At first I was very nervous I wouldn’t say the lines right,” said Harcum, who greets Crowe’s character, takes and delivers his order, and does a few ad-libs. “Russell Crowe made it a lot easier, giving me pointers, telling me to relax.”
More films are shot on locations outside of Los Angeles than ever before, thanks to financial incentives offered by municipalities eager to promote their areas and boost business, according to a report in an edition of this week’s Los Angeles Times. Even so, the shoots in and around Washington from January-through-April 2008 for “State of Play” were unusual because areas not normally filmed — including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Library of Congress and communities including Mount Pleasant — were included.
“I come from a documentary film background, so my instinct is to go to the real place and [film] the events. That’s much more interesting than what you can make up,” director Kevin Macdonald said from a hotel room in Los Angeles, where he had just arrived from London to do publicity for the film. “I was assured I could never do that because it’s a nightmare to film a whole movie [in such a location], but I managed to persuade them.”
Of course, filming in D.C. had its downsides, too, including when take after take in Mount Pleasant was ruined by an apparently inebriated bystander who kept shouting as Crowe spoke his lines. But Macdonald brushes that type of commotion off as a minor sour note.
D.C. traffic, though, is another downside that the cast and crew might not soon forget. Although actor Woody Andrews — who lived in D.C. a few years ago — got lost in the tangle of its streets on his way to the first day of shooting, his enthusiasm for filming here wasn’t dampened.
“It was sort of surreal filming in that major metropolitan city that is always pulsating and moving and feels very large, but has other elements that give it a small, neighborhood feel,” he said. “There’s an attractiveness and versatility to that you can’t re-create [on a set].”
