Who turned Providence locations into 'Ella McCay' sets? Meet some of the movie magicians

PROVIDENCE – Peter Wilcox was finishing up at Providence College and anticipating going to law school when a friend asked him that type of inconsequential question that can change the path of someone’s life:

“Do you want to work on this movie?”

It was 1993, and director Michael Corrente was making “Federal Hill.” Wilcox had done some construction work throughout high school and college, including a stint as a carpenter at Trinity Repertory Company.

So he jumped at the chance to find work before studying law. Although he’s credited as an “art assistant” in Corrente’s 1994 movie, his job included some brute-force work. “At the time," he said, "I was able to carry refrigerators on my back and carry them up to the third floor.”

Something about working on movies clicked for him.

“There’s a camaraderie that comes with sometimes working insane hours, sometimes under the most horrendous deadlines,” he said. “You just build a different kind of friendship.”

Wilcox never made it to law school, but he's still working on sets for the movies

Though he also does residential and commercial construction, he explained, “I try to be always working on movies.” That's a task that takes up much of his time these days. “It’s been very busy for us for a few years,” he said, referring to movie work in Rhode Island and New England.

That's how Wilcox came to find himself as construction coordinator for the 20th Century Studios movie “Ella McCay,” which began filming in Providence on Feb. 5 and wrapped May 3. That put him primarily responsible for managing the budget and the people involved with building sets, including “Helen’s 445,” a fictional bar on Broadway that sprang up in January, fooling neighbors into thinking they might have a new nightspot to check out.

“This is a really important part of the movie,” producer Julie Ansell told The Providence Journal while standing outside Helen's in March. “So much takes place here. [Helen] runs back and forth a lot because she lives right near her place of business. It becomes part of the fabric of her character. It just makes it complete.”

While the faux bar plays a large role in the movie, Wilcox is quick to downplay his role in creating Helen's.

“I did nothing. It’s the crew that does everything,” he said. “I have the least important job, because they do the work and have the talents.”

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Searching for a movie set that connects with the community

Olivia Minervini, assistant location manager for "Ella McCay," grew up in South Carolina but moved to Boston a decade ago, when her father, Richie, landed a role in the film "Grown Ups 2." She decided to stay, forging her own career in the movies.

“My job is to read a script ... and just scout as much as I can,” she told The Journal in March near the Helen's set. “We knew we wanted a building on a corner. We knew we wanted a lot of windows.”

The windows were important, because producers wanted the bar's relationship with its surroundings to be part of the movie. “It has that residential feel, the neighborhood bar feel,” said Minervini.

The more-than-century-old building seemed perfect to the "Ella McCay" producers.

“We saw 60 bars,” said Minervini. “This one I loved. This one I was fingers crossed it worked.”

But building owner Dan Hornby didn't answer a flyer she put on the building late last year.

'Ella McCay' director's cachet proves 'this is a big-time movie'

Hornby, a real estate developer, grew up in Barrington and moved to Providence 17 years ago. He owns several properties around the city, including the one Minervini had her eye on, which he bought in 2017.

He became connected with the movie when one of his tenants, who lives across the street and a few doors down, hoped the production would choose her apartment as a filming location.

“She was super excited the movie’s coming to town," Hornby told The Journal. "And I wasn’t that excited.”

Then he Googled James. L. Brooks, the writer and director of "Ella McCay," who co-created TV shows including "The Simpsons" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and directed movies such as Oscar-winner "Terms of Endearment" and "Broadcast News."

That bio changed Hornby's mind. 'I think this is like a real, big-time movie.'

Hornby gave a tour of the tenant's building to some of the crew, including production designer Richard Toyon and Minervini's boss, location manager Alex Berard, a Providence native.

“Is there something else you’re looking for?” Hornby asked.

They said they needed a place that could be a bar.

Hornby pointed up to the corner. “Would you like a bar right there?”

Not only did they accept the apartment of Hornby's tenant and the bar building, they also agreed to use Hornby's own home next door as bar owner Helen's home, too.

Transforming a Providence street isn't a simple task

Hornby had been using the building to store antique house parts. He quickly cleaned the place out, leaving an empty shell sometime just after Thanksgiving.

“The walls were to the studs,” said construction coordinator Wilcox.

Minervini said the crew took a photo of the empty space, ultimately hanging it on a wall inside Helen's, where it could become an Easter egg for a sharp-eyed viewer to spot in the finished film.

But, before Wilcox and his crew of carpenters and painters could get to work, someone had to decide what Helen's would look like.

That task fell first to production designer Toyon.

“The production designer usually gets the script early. The production designer is the first person to see the movie,” he told The Journal while standing in Almy Street next to Helen's during filming in March. “When I was hired, the first thing I did was get on a plane and come here.”

And then he started to answer questions.

“Any script is a series of problems that need to be solved,” Toyon said. “What city? How big is this place? Is it a big state? What’s the politics involved?”

And, he had to consider more technical questions. What time period will they be trying to show? What visual concept do they want to convey? What lighting, colors and textures will get that done?

“For every minute of film that you see, a million different decisions went into that,” he said.

Choosing that corner for Helen's wasn’t simple

“We looked far and wide,” from Newport to Providence, Toyon said.

The strong preference was for a building that was not an operating bar because, with construction and filming, that bar would be out of business for at least four months. “After that one, it really became about the neighborhood.”

The character of the corner of Broadway and Almy won out. “I can’t explain it, except to say it felt right,” said Toyon.

That sentiment was borne out when the actor who plays Helen first walked into the finished place. “This is my bar,” she proclaimed.

“Which is a really satisfying moment for me,” said Toyon.

Yes, the beer taps in Helen's are real

When art director Bryan Felty, of Duxbury, Massachusetts, walked onto the Helen's set in November, it was a blank canvas.

“It had been stripped down to the 2-by-4's,” Felty told The Journal during a visit to the set in March. “We just take the raw space and turn it into what we want.”

So, what did they want?

“Our goal is to actually have a working bar,” said Felty. That goes right down to the hoses that run beer from a keg room to the taps behind the bar. “We actually had a beverage company come in and install them for us.”

The brick chimney in the room, while a working chimney, isn't really brick.

The actual chimney, Felty explained, was covered in wood to be the shape and size the art team wanted. Then, the wood was covered in a continuous layer of a special kind of plaster called Structo-Lite.

Next, the artists got to work.

“Our scenics went and cut each individual brick in,” said Felty. Each brick had to be hand-painted to look like it had been in place for decades.

“That’s part of the job, how we figure stuff out, how we make it look real,” he said.

Every object in Helen's is there because Brandi Kalish and her team picked it out

While others are in charge of designing Helen's and building it, it's up to set decorator Brandi Kalish to make it look as though it's been there for decades.

That means carefully choosing the objects that will be found in the room, from decor items to the utilitarian, from furniture to lighting, from the mundane to the attention-grabbing. “Every single piece, down to pens,” Kalish said. “These have been discussed.”

How many decisions went into decorating Helen's and the other sets for "Ella McCay"?

“I don’t even know," said Kalish. "A trillion?”

Local antiques stores in the area played a surprising role in the film

Kalish, who was nominated for an Emmy for her set decoration for the HBO show "Silicon Valley," hails from northern Michigan. She got to Rhode Island for “Ella McCay” just after Thanksgiving.

“The first thing I did was I researched all of the local antiques stores and furniture stores,” she said. Rocket to Mars, a few blocks down Broadway in Providence, and Rhode Island Antiques Mall, in Pawtucket, quickly became favorites. So did websites Etsy and eBay. She even went to the basement of a fabric store in Lynn, Massachusetts, for vintage vinyl to cover the benches in the bar.

“A lot of stuff we do custom-made,” she said. “This is the fun part. I love designing custom pieces. I love making our sets one-of-a-kind.”

Anything so everything feels real in the fictional Helen's, so nothing feels out of place. “I just know it when I see it that it’s right for the set,” said Kalish. “It’s like painting a painting.”

Why did 'Ella McCay' film in Providence?

"Ella McCay" might well have picked Rhode Island as its filming location because executive producer Seth William Meier had ties to the Ocean State.

He grew up in Acton, Massachusetts, and worked on 1998's "Meet Joe Black," which filmed. in part, at the Aldrich Mansion in Warwick.

More: Movies and TV shows made in Rhode Island

“They asked my opinion about where to shoot,” Meier told The Journal. “It was always in the back of my mind to find a project that would work in Rhode Island.”

A key factor was Rhode Island itself and the availability of locations needed for the movie, not least of which was the more than century-old State House.

“We looked at state houses all over the U.S.,” said Meier. “It’s a beautiful building. The architecture, it’s incredible.”

Does Helen's have a future on Broadway?

Dan Hornby and his wife, Charle, have three children, ranging in age from 1 to 7.

Seeing Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis and movie star Emma Mackey walking up to their house was fun.

(Here's a bit of movie magic: characters in the film walk up to the Hornbys' house, through the front door and inside. But only the exterior is the Hornbys’ place; the interior is on a soundstage built inside the Cranston Street Armory.)

And what could compare with having Emmy winner Woody Harrelson do card tricks in your kitchen during downtime?

But Dan Hornby said that Helen's days are numbered, “We want it to be a space that will add to the neighborhood,” he said. “I don’t know if I want to live next to a bar.”

And that means that Peter Wilcox will oversee the destruction of what he oversaw being created.

But Wilcox sees a bit of a silver lining: In the past, used sets would be carted off to the dump. “It was kind of a hollow feeling.”

Now, “We donate a lot more to Habitat for Humanity.” So doors and fixtures, architectural accents and furniture – maybe even the bar – could have a second life after the credits roll on "Ella McCay."

Said Wilcox: “As a hypothetical, someone could be sitting at that bar someday.”

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: 'Ella McCay' in Providence: How locations were chosen and transformed