Surprise No. 1: A-listers Owen Wilson, Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd are coming to town later this month, but they won’t be lobbying; they’ll actually be working.
Surprise No. 2: They won’t be filming chase scenes along Pennsylvania Avenue, but rather witty dialogue and romantic intrigue in … Adams Morgan.
The three actors star in a new romantic comedy by James L. Brooks that remains officially untitled, although reports have referred to its working title, “How Do You Know?”
As we reported on Tuesday, Wilson will play a Nationals relief pitcher who competes with Rudd for the affections of Witherspoon. Monday afternoon saw about 200 locals get picked as extras at a casting call at Nationals Park.
And on Thursday morning, Mayor Adrian Fenty and executives from Columbia Pictures announced that principal shooting would center around Adams Morgan and other D.C. neighborhoods such as Penn Quarter and Dupont Circle. The building where they held the press conference, at the corner of Columbia Road and Adams Mill Road, will be one of the character’s offices, while a building directly across the street will serve as Wilson’s apartment.
Gary Martin, president of production administration at Columbia Tri-Star, told us it was the architecture and the neighborhood feel that drew producers to Adams Morgan. “It’s great to come here and shoot the monuments, but it’s a heckuva lot better to shoot the people,” he said.
Paula Weinstein, who’s co-producing with Brooks, the writer of the film, said that he “wanted to come to Washington from the beginning.”
After all, Brooks is no stranger to D.C. “I had the privilege of filming ‘Broadcast News’ in the DC area, and no matter how long or hard the day was, on my drive home, I could always look forward to the beauty of the city,” he said in a release. “It is, to me, the great city of the world. I couldn’t be more excited to be able to work here once more.”
Ditto Wilson, who shot much of “Wedding Crashers” in the area.
Kathy Hollinger, the director of the city’s Office of Motion Picture and Television Development, told us that shooting at National Park is expected to begin on June 14, and apart from some filming in Philadelphia, shooting will be concentrated in Washington.
But what we really wanted to know is how realistic will the city look to the knowledgeable local? Are they going to plop a Metro station down in the middle of Adams Morgan? “They haven’t asked for that,” said Hollinger. “They’re going to be as authentic as they can be.”
Fenty said over the 14-week production, schedule, the movie will hire 600 locals as crew and extras, provide job training to 20 high school and college students and bring in more than $8 million to the local economy.
