Focus on Delco
Chester students were given headsets to listen in to a live on-set scene during their visit to the Sun Center Studios on Wednesday.
CHESTER TOWNSHIP >> The kids bunched together to get a group shot on the Sun Center Studios campus Wednesday after a tour of the set of the film “Untouchable” — and then, as they turned around, leading man Kevin Hart popped out of his trailer to graciously greet them.
Some were so starstruck, they froze.
Dikya Freeman was in the front of the crowd as Hart came down the steps. He offered to take a selfie with the Chester Charter School for the Arts eight-grader.
“He was right there,” she said astounded, adding she couldn’t even think to talk to him. “It was like a ... wow!”
Akousa Watts, the charter’s head of school, kidded her: “You won the lottery today!”
Seventeen students from Chester Charter School for the Arts, Chester Community Charter School and the Chester Upland School District were treated to an exclusive tour Wednesday as they were escorted through sets for the movie, watched a scene being filmed and got a smidgen of Hart’s precious time for a phenomenal experience they won’t forget.
Jeff Rotwitt, the Sun Center Studios president, wanted the youths to be exposed to the plethora of careers attached to the film industry. So they got a behindthe-scenes look at the Neil Burger movie starring Hart, Bryan Cranston and Nicole Kidman that tells the story of a wealthy quadriplegic and the ex-con he hires to care for him.
Even before the tour started, the students were cautioned.
“If you see Kevin Hart, you must contain yourself,” Allen Lane, Sun Center operations manager, told them. “That’s the life we live here.”
He explained to the students how rare it was for them to be there.
“You don’t understand how difficult it is for a production to give up their rights for you to see this,” Lane said. “They’re very private. They’re very, very private.”
The first stage they visited had rows and rows of shelves filled with props – and one small room that was being propped for an up-
coming shower scene.
Then, they made their way past the stars’ trailers and were taken over to a Ferrari.
“If you want to take pictures you can,” Lane said, “but do not touch.”
Outside one of the doors, a red light spun hastily around.
“What that red light means is you stop doing what you’re doing and you be quiet because they are filming,” Lane explained.
The group was then escorted to one of the hangar-like stages that was being disassembled after
work began there Nov. 14. “It should be completely down by April 21,” Lane said.
Inside, the students walked through the set simulating a New York penthouse complete with living room, library and balcony.
As students were invited to lounge on the same seating as Hart and Cranston, Lane told them how the scenes are created.
“A lot of this moulding you see up here is styrofoam,” he said to various “Ooooohs” and “Aahhhs.” “A lot of the stuff you see in here is not real.”
He pointed to the wood-like flooring.
“It looks like high import but it’s not,” he said. “It’s plain old paneling. It’s just made to look
like this – it’s not oak or mahogany. They just make it look like this.”
Some items, he shared are real, such as the marble fireplace and the granite on the balcony.
The group was then directed to another stage where they donned headsets as they watched Hart and Cranston on screens in front of “Untouchable” director chairs.
Hart’s character was seen walking through a crowd at a party, saying, “Yeah! Yeah! I love it! I love it!”
He encourages Kidman’s character to stand and they walk over to Cranston.
“I was a horrible dancer,” he says, seated in a wheelchair. “I’m actually better now.”
At the end of the tour, after lunch, the students were corralled outside in front of the movie star trailers for the group picture.
Yet, even after the shots were taken, they were instructed to remain where they were.
Suddenly Hart’s trailer door opened and the actor walked down the steps as the students immediately swarmed him in a flurry of talking and laughter.
Hart took selfies with the kids and spoke to them and even let them take a group shot with him before he had to return to work.
As he headed back into the trailer, he waved and said, “I’ll see you all later.” The students were awed. “It was amazing,” CCSA seventh-grader
Skyy Brooks said. “He’s so funny in person.”
CCSA 10th-grader Tah’Mir Lamb was smitten by Hart’s appearance.
“He’s like one of my idols,” the student said. “I look up to him.”
Even Chester Mayor Thaddeus Kirkland got a little stardust in his eyes as he got the chance to speak to the beloved comedian and actor – and he was thankful for Hart’s time and demeanor.
“He was a real down-to-earth person, he was a real down-toearth kind of person,” the mayor said. “It was great that he came out for the kids. That means, ‘I’m not too good to interact with the young people who had taken out their time to come.’”