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PITTSBURGH TRIBUNE
By Jean Horne

Rob Marshall (seond from left) with SEP director Ellen Weiss Kander (left) and co-founders Maxine Lapiduss and Carl Kurlander

"When Pittsburgh calls, I'm there," declared Rob Marshall, native son and director of the Oscar-winning film "Chicago," at Saturday night's throw-a-rock, hit-a-talent blowout bash at the Andy Warhol Museum. The call he took came from a band of Pittsburghers who have launched the Steeltown Entertainment Project to bring Hollywood back to Mister Rogers' neighborhood. Where "rob learned All that Jazz, Shirley Jones found her Music Man, George Romero rose from the dead, and Flashdance got its Flash!"

Founded by femmes fabulous Ellen Weiss Kander, primetime TV producer/writer Maxine Lapiduss (she and rob went to the Allderdice prom together) and "St. Elmo's Fire" dynamic screenwriter/visiting Pitt professor Carl Kurlander, the project aims to create a mini-Sundance Festival here. And turn the regioninto an entertainment capital.

Earlier at WQED's studios, they stage a summit bringing together our show-biz experts who are generating billions in Tinseltown with investors and politicos who can help make it happen by creating the same tax incentives that have filmmakers flocking to Canada. We're talking talents with Hollywood heat and the power to use it. Even money says they can shift projects from the West Coast to Pittsburgh. And they paid their own way her to tell us that. Why? Because as Rob allowed, "You never stop being a Pittsburgher."