Celebrities ‘Get Lost’ in Westinghouse office in film
Almost a year before Westinghouse Castle in Wilmerding was earmarked for repurposing into an arts school and community center, it was the fictional headquarters for a cult that specialized in making celebrities disappear.
The former General Office of Westinghouse Air Brake Co. served as a primary filming location for “Get Lost,” a locally shot indie feature about five brothers venturing out into the world and experiencing all its wonders and horrors in equal measure. The film, available to watch for free via the streaming service Tubi, is the brainchild of writer-director Corley White, a 31-year-old Homewood native and Oakland resident.
White’s film starts out as a twisted fairy tale and slowly devolves into something more gruesome as the brothers get tangled up in the cult’s efforts to make money off the big names they have detained. The tone is something along the lines of “Enchanted” meets “Scary Movie,” or at least those are two of the films White said he drew inspiration from.
“I got a weird mind,” he told the Post-Gazette. “I watch a lot of wild, crazy stuff. A cult kidnapping celebrities and selling their content online was just a crazy idea I came up with, and we all added to it and structured it out.”
You can check out the NSFW trailer for “Get Lost” on YouTube. White said that in addition to Tubi, the film will likely also end up on other streaming services like Crackle, Vudu and Amazon Prime Video in the near future.
Though White hails from the music world, he and a few of his frequent collaborators decided to
try their hand at making an independent film. Since money is always tight on a production like this, he made a movie that didn’t require too many bells and whistles. It seemed to him that “a scary house, haunted mansion-type thing” that only needed a few locations was his best bet.
“Get Lost” was shot last summer over the course of about a week. White said that filming was split between Pittsburgh and New York City, though about 80% of the shoot occurred in the Steel City. The bulk of the film’s back half takes place in and around Westinghouse Castle as the fairy tale gives way to something far more sinister.
One of the main things that sets “Get Lost” apart from other locally shot indies is the number of social media stars in it. There are cameos and some meatier performances from rappers Bill Collector and Fatboy SSE, comedian Shiggy and “Wild ‘N Out” star Justina Valentine.
“We just got together and agreed upon something,” said Sunsene Bey, who helped with the script and plays “Nerd Brother.” “We started writing and putting stuff together, how we can contact celebrities to make this extreme and on a huge platform for us to actually strike the world as far as us being independent filmmakers.”
Bey, 30, of East Liberty, goes by the name “Hengo Raw” on social media and dabbled in improv skits for years before giving film acting a try in “Get Lost.” Going full Steve Urkel wasn’t hard for Bey because “it’s who I am internally,” and he had a lot of fun reaching inside himself to bring out the “super nerd” who was there all along.
The creative team for “Get Lost” also included 28year-old Pittsburgh resident and Wheeling, W.V., native Joshua Heatherington (Josh From YNC on social media), who helped out with casting and had a small role as well.
Aaron Romeo, 36, of Castle Shannon, was involved in honing the film’s writing and played Xander the Executioner. He got a kick out of meeting the famous folks who worked on “Get Lost” and hanging out with people who stopped by to see what they were doing during filming in Pittsburgh and the Big Apple.
“It was real friendly,” he said. “The people were real cool, chill. You could talk to everyone. ... During the filming, you could feel the positive energy. It was a nice feeling and vibe.”
White is proud of how he and his crew were able to “bring a lot of people together from the city to be in the movie.” He has a bunch of other projects in the works and also plans to eventually make “Get Lost: Part Two.” Considering how this film ends, it seems the sequel would probably focus more on the cult and their dastardly designs.
He said that while developing “Get Lost,” a few doubters said the concept was too ambitious and that this film would never see the light of day.
“They thought we couldn’t get it done, but it got done,” White said. “In my personal opinion, we did good. The next film is going to be way better.”