Philadelphia School District Goes Hollywood
By Mike DeNardo
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The Philadelphia School District is going Hollywood. For a few days, anyway, as a TV pilot is shot inside school headquarters.
There are gurneys in the hallways and actors in lab coats are milling about inside school district headquarters. If you didn't know better, you'd think you were inside Independence Memorial Hospital, the fictitious site of an NBC-TV pilot entitled "Do No Harm."
Jason McCauley, the assistant location manager for Open for Business Productions, helped to transform school headquarters into a hospital -- for a day or two. "We added some furniture, some signage. We have a lot of frosting on the windows, kind of what we call a Hampshire Frost on the windows, so that when you walk by glass, you see shapes but you don't see people. So, people can continue working here at the school district."
McCauley says 440 North Broad was a perfect fit. "The building has had a great renovation, which opens up this wonderful atrium on the inside, which is not only beautiful, but works well because our hospital is supposed to be a kind of building that maybe was older and has been kind of renovated."
The cash-strapped school district is getting a stipend of about $10,000. A district spokesman says every little bit helps.
