Steeltown Entertains

Director George Romero with Steeltown Co-Founder, Maxine Lapiduss

There's a scene in David Cronenberg's creepy "Videodrome" in which James Woods watches a snuff film and wonders where they find the actors to make them. "Pittsburgh!" is his colleague's reply, and it brought the house down Saturday when it was shown at the beginning of Laura Davis' documentary, "Pittsburgh: Hollywood's Best Kept Secret."

Of course the mood was already lively, maybe even jubilant, as 400 or so guests crammed into The Andy Warhol Museum to celebrate the first-ever Pittsburgh Entertainment Summit. The meeting was sponsored by the newly created Steeltown Entertainment Project, and its missions is at once ambitious and harrowing: to promote an entertainment industry right here in River City.

Steeltown executive director Ellen Weiss Kander and co-founders Maxine Lapiduss (writer/producer, "Dharma & Greg") and Carl Kurlander (writer, "St. Elmo's fire") circulated all night, with Lapiduss acting as emcee for the evening. Her sister Sally (writer/producer, "Mad About you") was on hand along with other Hollywood insiders including Terri Minsky (creator of "Lizzie McGuire"), hometown favorite Jamie Widdoes (actor/director, "8 Simple Rules…"), Jack smith (producer, "the Young and the Restless") and David Conrad (actor, "Miss Match").