The
Rebound
Town
It could easily and truthfully be argued
that Braddock is in the midst
of the best rebranding campaign any
old mill town has ever undertaken.
By Jonathan Barnes
D
The Rebound Town • The Rebound Town • The Rebound Town • The Rebound Town • The Rebound Town • The Rebound Town
ecades ago, when Braddock filmmaker Tony
Buba created his cinema verite film “Lightning
Over Braddock”, an older character in it sung
the refrain, “Braddock, where have you gone?”
The question had special resonance for lifelong
Pittsburghers, who’d witnessed how the declining
steel industry had gutted many old mill towns.
Braddock once boasted 30,000 souls and was
a boom town, but that was a long time ago. These days it’s an old
town with a still-functioning steel mill and an active citizenry
and government that’s reinventing the place into a haven for the
arts and new business startups. Thanks to the creative energies of
filmmakers, journalists, actors and others, the question one might
reasonably ask about Braddock is, “Where hasn’t it been?”
Late last year the Braddock was the central location of filming
for the feature film “Out of the Furnace” which was shot in the
downtown area. The film starred Christian Bale, as Russell Baze, a
former convict who gets a job at a steel mill in Braddock when he
to film for a short segment that’s part of a collection of video
documentaries on Pittsburgh that are available online for free.
The film featuring the area is called “Braddock America.”
It could easily and truthfully be argued that Braddock is in
the midst of the best rebranding campaign any old mill town
has ever undertaken. Last year, “Out of the Furnace” spent
eight weeks filming in the area. Mayor John Fetterman is not
surprised at the attention.
“It’s a special community with a unique landscape… We’re
also known to be customer-oriented,” Fetterman says. “The
production literally had zero complaints. That’s a testament to
the director, Scott Cooper. He felt it was an important story
to tell.”
Fetterman won’t tell you, but he, and others, like Jeb
Feldman of UnSmoke Systems and Vickie Vargo, executive
director of Braddock Carnegie Library, are some of the
vanguard of folks spreading the “Made in Braddock” brand
far and wide. Feldman, who works as a civil servant, considers
is released from jail. His brother Rodney, played by Casey Affleck,
returns to Braddock from active duty in Iraq and is desperate to
make money. He gets involved in the underground fighting world
and then disappears, and Bale’s character has to find him. The starstudded movie also features actors Zoe Saldana, Forest Whitaker,
Woody Harrelson, Sam Shepard and Willem Dafoe.
Part of the reason why filmmakers continue to come to the city
to film and photograph Braddock is because of the others who’ve
filmed here before, Buba included. Years back, it was featured
in a jeans commercial for Levi’s. In 2012, a small film crew from
French-German public ARTE TV came to the town specifically
his passion to be his work providing artist studio space and
gallery space in UnSmoke Systems, a converted former
parochial school across from the Edgar Thomson Works steel
mill entrance.
Feldman learned of Braddock several years ago as a
graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University, and quickly
found himself drawn to revitalization there. He began
UnSmoke, and also moved to the town.
“When I first moved to Pittsburgh I didn’t envision myself
staying around. What I found in Braddock excited me,”
Feldman says, adding that seeing how interest in the town has
Continued on page 20
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