The Rehabilitation of the Hill was designed as a community teaching film which gave those who live in the Hill District and surrounding communities as well Pitt students the opportunity to work alongside experience film professionals in telling a moving story about the challenges of community development.  Before the production, Demetrius and I co-hosted filmmaking workshops at The Hill House to identify those who may want to be part of this film, as well as help train people for when productions like Denzel Washington’s productions of Fences and Ma Rainy’s Black Bottom come to town.

For more, please read the articles below about the making of the film.

https://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/in-rehabilitation-of-the-hill-filmmaking-is-a-community-project/

https://www.post-gazette.com/ae/movies/2017/04/16/Pittsburgh-film-Hill-District-The-Rehabilitation-of-the-Hill-trains-new-actors-tradespeople-Demetrius-Wren/stories/201704160032

https://www.chronicle.pitt.edu/story/pitt-class-producing-feature-film-local-actors-hill-district

And watch this video with director Demetrius Wren discussing the idea of a community teaching film.

Watch this segment from The Reel Teens on the making of the movie:

Watch this documentary on the project which was produced by Pitt students in my Making The Documentary Class:

And visit the website for the film here.

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Shortly after, Saved By the Bell evolved into the College Years and Carl ended up working on Saved By the Bell: The New Class, which never quite captured the magic of the original.   Carl did write a few memorable episodes.   One the Homecoming King featured one of the first roles for West World and Enchanted star James Marsden, a drunk driving snowmobile episode which was a first role for Grounded for Life and Rules of Enchantment star Megyn Price, and a now famous episode where football coach Jim Harbaugh had a cameo playing Screech’s Cousin.

As described in this Wall Street Journal article, one of the new cast members Eric Little let catching a big pass on the football field go to his head, and the next game, he does a touchdown dance pre-maturely and becomes a laughing stock.  Screech keeps offering to bring his “less popular” football playing cousin to talk with Eric, but the gang dismisses him, until his cousin shows up and turns out to be legendary football player and coach Jim Harbaugh.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vuLo85T0g3U

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While the T-NBC’s dominated Saturday morning for most of the 1990s, “Malibu, CA” was a bit more controversial.

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“A worthy successor to Project Greenlight…”

The Chair is flawless, riveting reality TV

    –– Reality Blurred 

‘The Chair’: TV Review, The Hollywood Reporter

Backed by a long line of co-producers, including Zachary Quinto, Starz’s first original unscripted series is an indie look at how indie films are made

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Land of Bridges. And, possibly, an indie film renaissance, if Zachary Quinto and the producers behind The Chair get their way. Created by Project Greenlight‘s Chris Moore, the Starz series pits two up-and-coming directors against one another. The two contestants are given the same script and the same location, but film separate movies that will emphasize their creative differences. The Pittsburgh location is key, though, not only because of Quinto’s connection to the city (it’s his birthplace, and he also graduated from Carnegie Mellon University) and tax credits, but because Chris Moore had some financial ties there that helped launch the series. As is emphasized early and often, that part is key. 

As Co-Executive Producer of the series, Carl Kurlander help support and raise funds for Starz television’s first award-winning ten part docu-series, working closely with Good Will Hunting and Project Greenlight producer Chris Moore and Zack Quinto and his company Before the Door on the project.

This has been part of Kurlander’s ongoing mission to support regional talent and help Western Pennsylvania become a player in the entertainment industry, first articulated in his Post-Gazette editorial “Pittsburgh’s Next Industrial Revolution: Entertainment” and the short film “Pittsburgh: Hollywood’s Best Kept Secret.”

Click here Watch The Trailer

Watch episodes and the entire series on Starz and Amazon Prime.

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It was during this internship that Carl wrote the first draft of a screenplay and got “gazpacho, no croutons, no sour cream, and chopped egg on the side” for director Joel Schumacher.   A year  later, Kurlander would wind Joel’s assistant on the movie “D.C Cab” with Mr. T where Joel would make fun of Kurlander’s  notion that he had his own “generation” and assuring Carl that young people are always searching for identity, meaning, love, and success.

This dialogue led to the script they would both write months later about life after college.  In addition to the St. Elmo’s Fire subplot of unrequited love played out with Emilio Estevez and Andie McDowell, Schumacher and Kurlander drew from other friends and life experiences that were happening to Carl.   “St. Elmo’s Fire” is a nautical phenomenon that sailors would see at night that would let them know they would be okay.  But it also had a magical quality as the movie they wrote would get made within a year and become a film which remains in the culture, for better or worse, decades later.

On occasion, it is even said to capture a generation that came of age in the 1980s, but Carl has also learned to appreciate Joel’s wisdom, that young people continue to go through everything depicted in the movie which is why perhaps the movie still resonates with so many.

Read Carl’s reflections on St. Elmo’s Fire’s 35th anniversary:

‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ Hits 35; Co-Writer Carl Kurlander Recalls Joel Schumacher’s Quintessential ’80s Movie

And his tribute to director Joel Schumacher:

Joel Schumacher’s ‘St. Elmo’s Fire’ Co-Writer Carl Kurlander On A Mentor’s Generosity & Influence

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How The Fight Against Polio Was Won

Realizing the collective effort it would take to defeat this new unseen enemy, Duprex and Kurlander began to talk about creating an education film which would help educators better explain the process of making a vaccine today versus 65 years ago when Jonas Salk and his team developed the world’s first polio vaccine.    Working with the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Creativity, a new thirty-minute vaccine education film has been made, Chasing Covid, documenting present day efforts to develop a Covid-19 vaccine framed by the development of the Salk polio vaccine.

The program has been designed with educators input to help teachers in schools talk about the history of vaccines, how a vaccine is developed in the lab (and the difference today versus 65 years ago when Salk made his vaccine), how it is tested on animals and humans, and the challenges of distribution a vaccine globally, including concerns about vaccine hesitancy and equity.

Chasing Covid will premiere globally on April 12, 2021, the 66th anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine being declared “Safe and effective.” (Details to be announced soon, but email ckpa@pitt.edu to be notified.)

Also in April will be the launch of the Take a Shot At Taking the World viral video contest where students can create and make their own short videos (under 3 minutes) to help good informations about vaccines “go viral.”     (A similar contest was done in 2012 based on The Shot Felt Round The World.  Click here for details about that previous contest.)

For more on lessons to be learned from polio for coronavirus, read How lessons from the distribution of the Salk polio vaccine can help us with coronavirus today  an article Carl co-authored with Dr. Randy Juhl, distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Pharmacy at University of Pittsburgh.

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The documentary The Shot Felt Round The World began when Carl and his students at the University of Pittsburgh filmed the 50th anniversary of the Salk polio vaccine speaking with Dr. Peter Salk, the eldest son of Jonas, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of Polio: An American Story David Oshinsky, those who worked alongside Jonas Salk in the lab, and many polio pioneers who were amongst to take the then experimental polio vaccine.

“Shot” won Best Documentary at the San Luis Obispo Film Festival and was then picked up by the Smithsonian Channel where Kurlander and Smithsonian producer Charles Poe were able to film an addition interview with Bill Gates who connected the development of the Salk vaccine to today’s efforts to end polio and combat infectious disease.

That one hour TV program, A Shot To Save The World, won the 2015 CINE Golden Eagle Award for Best Science Program and was shown around the world including in prime time on the BBC as The Polio Story: The Vaccine That Change the World.

In summer 2020, Kurlander appeared on CBS Sunday Morning  on this story How The Fight Against Polio Was Won     in which he and Dr. Paul Duprex, the director of UPMC’s Center for Vaccine Research, paralleled the development of the Salk vaccine to present day efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine.   That has led to a new vaccine education program which will premiere in 2021.

That piece came from an article Kurlander wrote on The Deadly Polio Epidemic and Why It Matters for Coronavirus.

Kurlander wrote a subsequent article on Lessons from how the polio vaccine went from lab to the public that Americans Can learn from today with his collaborator Dr. Randy Juhl.

In addition to these films and articles, Kurlander also pioneer a vaccine education program, Take A Shot At Changing the World, a viral video contest in which young people were encouraged to use the polio film to make their own videos on vaccines.

A CBS Sunday Morning News story on How We Won The Fight On Polio featuring Dr. Paul Duprex, the Jonas Salk Chair and director of Pitt’s Center for Vaccine Research, and Kurlander has led to a new film, Chasing Covid, which seeks to demystify how vaccines are made and distributed and to address issues of vaccine hesitancy.

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