By 'Lost & Found in Cleveland' Co-Writer/ Director Keith Gerchak
Playhouse Square is about to star in a major motion picture that hits 500+ theaters nationwide from today, November 7. Written, produced and directed with co-filmmaker Marisa Guterman, LOST & FOUND IN CLEVELAND is a look at the post-Industrial American Dream in the Industrial Midwest.
It’s a slice of life depiction over a 24-hour period that follows the personal odysseys of five very different people, whose lives intertwine when America’s favorite televised antiques appraisal show comes to Cleveland. Hello, ideastream.
As a hometown boy, Playhouse Square’s central role in the film, and home to our production office, serves as the latest in a lifetime of full circle moments with these historic theaters.
The story begins in 1982: closing night of Our Lady of Angels’ school production of Tom Sawyer: All-American Boy. The playwright rushed backstage excitedly to tell me that in the audience was the assistant to Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival’s Artistic Director Vincent Dowling. He asked to meet, and my recollection of the conversation is very Old Hollywood, complete with cigar – something to the effect of, “How’d ya like to be an actor, kid?”
It was GLSF’s first season at the newly renovated Ohio Theatre, saved from the wrecking ball while the remainder of the historic venues stood vacant and abandoned. I didn’t know these theatres from their cinematic heyday, although my parents’ first date was seeing It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World at the Allen Theatre – so in some respects, my connection to Playhouse Square starts in 1963.
My first show with GLSF was The Merry Wives of Windsor. I remember stepping onto the Ohio stage for the first performance, the energy bouncing back from a packed house, and the buzz of backstage life in the greenroom with that enormous cast. I was officially bitten by the acting bug.
The experience of opening night for Waiting for Godot was quite different, with five of us onstage and only four people in the audience (who, in true Cleveland fashion, sat in their subscription seats at the back of the orchestra and fifth row balcony, respectively). It turned out that Cleveland audiences were not ready to drive downtown for Samuel Beckett in the Summer of 1983.
Waiting for Godot 1983
I’ll probably get in trouble for admitting this 40 years later, but during A Child’s Christmas in Wales, I climbed through the collapsed upstage wall of the State Theatre and sat on the stage floor staring into the abyss of the abandoned theatre, imagining what that space must have been like – and what it could become again.
It was during the run of Godot that one of the NY actors said, “It’s a tough business, kid. Get a backup to acting.” I took that to heart, and leaving the theater closing night for a fateful drive cross-country to LA (a night that coincided with my thirteenth birthday), I decided to become an architect.
I earned a Master’s Degree in Architecture while still studying acting and performing, and over the course of a decade became the director of two different architecture firms in town. In a full circle moment, Playhouse Square became my client, and it was a privilege to be directly involved in the renovation and expansion of the complex.
I was simultaneously helping to start Cesear’s Forum, a tiny company at Kennedy’s, in the converted basement storage room of the theaters I was renovating upstairs - where as one local
critic noted, we performed Samuel Beckett “like early Christians in the catacombs of the commercial coliseum upstairs.”
I eventually packed my bags and moved to NY and then LA, where Marisa and I met and promptly began our 10+ year journey creating LOST & FOUND IN CLEVELAND. In writing the screenplay, we thought about taking a Best in Show approach, and while there are certainly elements of that comedy, it was another classic film that inspired us to tell a more earnest and hopeful story that was truer to the heart of Cleveland.
As we discovered -- at the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum in Canton – The Wizard of Oz is an allegory about the American Dream under William McKinley’s administration, with Northeast Ohio connections. If Scarecrow represents the farmers, and Tin Man the factory workers, then each of our characters represent a slice through modern America. And rather than a heart or a brain, our heroes bring their objects to our Wizards, the appraisers …only to discover that the answer to self-worth lies within.
What sets this movie apart from Superman and others filmed in the city is that here, Cleveland is the protagonist - not serving as a fictional Metropolis, but rather authentically playing itself. It is a film where the story and characters are directly inspired by the neighborhoods - the mail carrier from Hough, the retired steel plant worker in Slavic Village, the Malley's chocolate plant worker on Duck Island, the CWRU professor in Cleveland Heights – all coming together for an event downtown. And in our minds, Playhouse Square serves as the ideal forum where Clevelanders, east and west, meet as a community.
The cast is a list of fan favorites - Dennis Haysbert, June Squibb, Martin Sheen, Stacy Keach, Liza Weil, Santino Fontana, Esther Povitsky, Loretta Devine, Jon Lovitz, Jeff Hiller, Rory O'Malley, Dot-Marie Jones, Yvette Yates Redick, Benjamin Steinhauser, and Mark L. Walberg (Host of Antiques Roadshow). They all came to Cleveland in the middle of January to tell this story – and to spend a week together in the KeyBank State Theatre, the perfect setting for our fictional appraisal show, to create this jewel box of a film. A full circle moment.
With an all-star ensemble cast and a story with universal appeal, the film is the kind of comedy with heart that Hollywood doesn't seem to make any more - and that audiences across the country are craving. It has the ingredients of a holiday classic - in the spirit of another Northeast Ohio favorite, A Christmas Story. The underlying theme is hope.
It's a film that has resonated wherever it plays, selling out festival screenings coast to coast - as well as its recent Midwest Premiere, back here at the KeyBank State Theatre, where it shattered two 50-year records with the largest film attendance in the history of either the Cleveland International Film Festival or Playhouse Square, with 2700 people in the audience. If that child actor could have known what the view would be like sitting on the KeyBank State Theatre stage 40 years later – another full circle moment.
In the end, this is a film about Cleveland, made by Clevelanders and paid for by Clevelanders, from national corporations to a local book club. It is not only a love letter to Northeast Ohio but a 90-minute commercial for it. Cinema is powerful in its messaging, and we aim to do our part in changing old narratives. Audiences are saying that the film makes them see Cleveland in an entirely new light - as a place to visit, to work, or to relocate. It did convince Marisa to move here herself.
It's been a lifetime of surprising full circle moments with my old friend Playhouse Square. It’s thrilling to be able to showcase the beauty and grandeur of these spaces. Both onscreen and behind the scenes, Playhouse Square truly plays a meaningful role in the storytelling of LOST & FOUND IN CLEVELAND. See you at the movies!