So you're filming a movie about a post-apocalyptic future, and you need to find a location that can stand in for a bleak, post-disaster wasteland. Where do you go?
Hey, how 'bout Pittsburgh?
Oh, har har. Pittsburgh's a dump. Hilarious.
Except it's not a joke.
For the movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," filmmakers needed a locale that conveyed the emptiness of a landscape devastated by an unnamed catastrophe. Pittsburgh fit the bill, director John Hillcoat told USA Today :
"It's a beautiful place in fall with the colors changing," Hillcoat says. "But in winter, it can be very bleak. There are city blocks that are abandoned. The woods can be brutal."
Hmm...that doesn't sound too great for ol' Pittsburgh. Let's see what "Road" star Viggo Mortensen had to say:
"It's tangible, the misery and hopelessness and the bleakness," Mortensen says.
Ouch.
The film [...] also was shot in Katrina-ravaged New Orleans and on Mount St. Helens in Washington state for scenes of devastation.
Yeowch!! That's not great company...
Zach Patton -- Executive Editor. Zach has written about a range of topics, including social policy issues and urban planning and design. Originally from Tennessee, he joined GOVERNING as a staff writer in 2004. He received the 2011 Jesse H. Neal Award for Outstanding Journalism
E-mail: zpatton@governing.com 
Written and compiled by staff writers and editors, GOVERNING View is an on-the-ground, and sometimes behind-the-scenes, look at the topics we're covering in print and online. From notes on what's up in statehouses, county courthouses and city halls, to encounters with people, places and things, GOVERNING View is a window into the side of state and local government you don't always see.
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