Thanks to OnlineJLofan.com for this “teaser” poster for “The Back Up Plan”. Wish it had Alex’s name on it!

They also had a link to a great interview with Jennifer Lopez that also includes some quotes from Alex! You can read it here:Jennifer Returns With A Back Up Plan

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has posted the second part of it’s discussion with “Three Rivers” creator and executive producer, Carol Barbee.

As Pittsburgh prepares to be in prime-time again with the locally-set CBS series “Three Rivers,” we continue our conversation with creator/executive producer Carol Barbee. Earlier this month we talked about why Pittsburgh was selected as a setting. This week, we get into some of the local flavor that made its way into the pilot episode, which somehow managed to received an award before it even premieres (which sort of ruins the award’s credibility in my eyes).

Note: As we’ve also reported, that pilot episode may not air first. It may not ever air. Networks are loathe to say they’re scrapping a pilot, lest their shows get tainted with the moniker of “troubled,” but it seems likely that some of the scenes shot for the “Three Rivers” pilot will either be re-shot, inserted in a future episode or scrapped.

Barbee did medical research for “Three Rivers” at The Cleveland Clinic (hold your hissing, Cleveland bashers) before traveling to Pittsburgh to walk our streeets and get a sense of the city and to figure out where her characters would live.

“It’s a really cool city and not so huge that you feel overwhelmed,” she said. “It feels homey.”

She imagines her lead character, Dr. Andy Yablonski (Alex O’Loughlin) lives on Mt. Washington, where he grew up.

Pittsburgh’s famous Primanti Bros. gets a shoutout in the “Three Rivers” pilot. Barbee discovered in researching the world of transplant doctors that they’re always concerned with what food is brought along for plane flights when teams go to collect organs for transplant. In the script, Barbee has one doctor order the new transplant coordinator to get him a sandwich from Primanti’s.

“I went online and when I looked for famous food from Pittsburgh, Primanti’s came up a thousand times,” Barbee said. On her visit to Pittsburgh to shoot the pilot, Barbee made a pilgrimage to Primanti’s with other members of the production crew. “I bought everybody a T-shirt that says ‘Primanti Bros.’ and ‘Bite Me.’”

Barbee’s one regret was that she didn’t get more Pittsburgh paraphenalia on the set of the pilot.

“We were getting ready to shoot at a nurses’s station and one of the guys on the crew — most of them were from Pittsburgh — said it should be filled with Pirates and Steelers memorabilia,” Barbee said.

Although the series will be shot in Hollywood, Barbee said the intention is to return to Pittsburgh to film exterior scenes that will be inserted in episodes.

“The hope and plan is for us to go to Pittsburgh once or twice a year and save up scenes from different episodes and shoot scenes that show we’re in Pittsburgh,” Barbee said. “I really want to get those rivers and bridges in there. I really want to do a big funnicular scene. We have to use that.”

Another question Pittsburgh viewers frequently ask: Why do shows set in Pittsburgh never seem to feature any Pittsburghese? In the past, producers have told me they’re afraid the Yinzer accent would baffle viewers in the rest of the country. Barbee said a scene was shot for the “Three Rivers” pilot using a local actor that got cut.

“There’s a scene where Andy is paged to come to the ER and there’s a guy from the neighborhood — Eddie, a working-class guy — who got in a bar fight and figured if he asked fro Andy he’d get seen sooner,” Barbee recalled. “It was a wonderful scene that gave a sense of Andy’s connection to Pittsburgh and this one neighborhood. We cast a guy from Pittsburgh and he did the whole Yinzer accent and he was hilarious, doing the whole Yinzer thing. But once we got into editing we found it slowed the pilot down.”

Barbee hopes to use the scene in a future episode or re-shoot it, possibly with the same Pittsburgh actor.

***

Part three of my chat with Barbee will appear here in Tuned In Journal next week.
Posted Jul 02 2009, 01:39 AM by Rob Owen
Filed under: TV, Rob Owen, CBS, Three Rivers

You can leave comments here:Tuned In:Post-Gazette.com

SpoilerTV has a new “extended” promo for “Three Rivers”:

.. And there is a cute story about Alex shopping for shoes in Pittsburgh during the filming of the pilot…

Aussie Alex O’Loughlin filmed the CBS pilot Three Rivers in Pittsburgh during April 2009, and during that time he visited Best-Made Shoes and purchased the Birkenstock Tatami Alton which he can be seen wearing in the pilot episode…..

You can read the full story here:shoppingbloomfield.com

Thanks to Audrey for this scan from this week’s “Soap Opera Weekly”. It’s nice to see “Three Rivers” buzz in so many different places!

Click the image below to see larger version:

This “Convention Trailer” (getting ready for ComicCon09 perhaps?) has been online..then yanked off by Warner Brothers..but seems to be accessible again..so we’ll post and hope it stays up.

No sign of Alex, or any of the other actors for that matter, but it will give you an idea of the what the movie will be like.

Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette has posted the first part of an interview he did with “Three Rivers” executive producer/series creator Carol Barbee.

Creating ‘Three Rivers’

Native Pittsburghers sometimes ask me why a TV show would film here, and the tone is often such that the implication is “We’re not worthy, why would they pick us?”

I’m also interested in “Why Pittsburgh?” but not because we’re not worthy. I’m just always curious in the process that results in a TV show being set or filmed here. Often there’s a story behind it.

In the case of “Three Rivers,” the fall CBS medical drama set in Pittsburgh, executive producer/series creator Carol Barbee said a confluence of factors led her to our city.

You can read the full story here:Pittsburgh Post-Gazette