‘THE TENDER BAR’ REVEALS NEW TREND
Clooney film shot across state is a sign of a more film-friendly Mass., with tax incentives rewarding well
Vin Orlando has owned Jacob’s Corner, a “true regulars’ bar,” as he calls it, on Beverly’s Rantoul Street for almost a decade.
The bar, named for his friend Jacob Maxfield who died shortly after graduating college, has become a staple of Beverly, serving college kids, locals in their 20s and 30s, seniors playing the lottery and Hollywood actors George Clooney and Ben Affleck.
“You have a bar that’s open 365 days a year, a lot of times nothing ever changes, same patrons,” he said. “But then you got that one day, you’re like, ‘Well, George Clooney is in my bar, Ben Affleck’s outside of my bar’ — it’s pretty cool.”
Clooney and Affleck were at Jacob’s Corner last spring filming “The Tender Bar,” a recently released film on Amazon Prime that tells the Long Island, New York-based story of writer J.R. Moehringer.
Producers for the project had come into the bar several times to scout the site. Ultimately, Orlando was told that Clooney, the director of the film, chose the site “because he reminded him of a place he went to when he was younger,” Orlando said.
Greg Chiodo, the film’s location manager, said he chose the site out of over 100 initial options because “it just kind of reminded him of the neighborhood watering hole,” he said, adding that “once George saw it, that was it.”
Orlando said he met Clooney twice over two days of filming as Jacob’s Corner was turned into “The Dickens” for the movie. He said the two chatted about Clooney’s career and his love for Clooney’s work. “It’s like talking to a normal guy, one of the nicest guys you could ever talk to in that situation,” he said, adding that he spoke respectfully to everyone from the crew to Ben Affleck.
Once the movie came out, The Cabot in Beverly screened it, drawing cheers from the crowd every time a landmark in the city came on screen. Now that it’s on Amazon Prime, Orlando described the surreal experience of flipping through the streaming service and, “the top movie right now depicts Ben Affleck leaning against a convertible, and behind it is my bar,” he said.
“The Tender Bar” also includes scenes shot in Lowell, standing in for the main character’s hometown of Manhasset, Long Island, Fitchburg, Devens, Watertown, Ipswich, Cambridge, Boston, Braintree, and Wakefield.
Chiodo, the location manager, didn’t think a career in film would lead him to New England.
“Wanting to be involved in Hollywood and sort of following that path, never in a thousand years did I think I would end up in Massachusetts,” Chiodo said.
Chiodo, a Detroit native, has lived in the Bay State ever since graduating from Emerson College, and has scouted locations for local movies including “Knives Out,” “Shutter Island,” “Knight and Day,” “Grown Ups 2,” “Edge of Darkness,” and “The Tender Bar.”
After location managing for a Nike commercial, Chiodo realized not only that location management was one of the more reliable industry gigs in Massachusetts, but also that the industry here is thriving.
Once the tax incentives for the film industry came to the Bay State, “it seemed like the incentive was here for a long enough time to kind of plant my flag in Massachusetts,” he said. “After that, it was kind of one after another.”
Filmmakers looking to make movies in Massachusetts could be eligible for a 25% production credit, a 25% payroll credit and a sales tax exemption. The most recent Department of Revenue figures from 2019 place that payout at over $77 million for 179 projects, but a previous Herald column on the subject places the revenue generation at $2 billion in economic activity in 2019 and 2020.
State lawmakers permanently extended the credit last year, and Chiodo expects it will only bring more movies to the Bay State. He added that the steady stream of young film talent from colleges like Emerson and Boston University will feed the industry well into the future.
“The production community is a lot more local than I think people might realize,” he said. “It’s keeping a lot of Massachusetts residents busy.”