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Fort Wayne's film record is short enough to enumerate, and this section does, scene by scene. The city's productions were few: the last shot of In the Company of Men was filmed in the main banking lobby of the Lincoln Bank Tower, and Mark Archer, typecast by that success as a producer, got to direct with American Reel in 1999. Around the genuine items the section clears the underbrush, starting with the hardiest false claim in the local record, the one that gives Fort Wayne a piece of Hoosiers, a picture shot nowhere near the city and claimed anyway, even in professional publicity. What remains after the checking is the shape of the record itself: a handful of real productions, a few famous frames, and a town that appears on screen far less often than it believes. Each claim here is carried only as far as its documentation goes.
Fort Wayne on film: the shape of the record
1938 — the present
The record, honestly drawn: Fort Wayne has never been a movie town in the Hollywood sense, and its film history is the more interesting for it. One feature made here became a landmark of American independent cinema and won at…
Night of Evil (1962): the Fort Wayne-made feature
Filmed summer 1960 · premiered 27 January 1962, Embassy Theatre
A hometown production: Richard Galbreath was a Fort Wayne maker of industrial films — local memory also ties his shop, Galbreath Pictures, to the Eckrich commercials that were a staple of regional television — when he directed…
In the Company of Men (1997): the landmark
Filmed June 1996 · premiered Sundance, January 1997
The city's one classic: Neil LaBute was a playwright teaching drama and film at IPFW — Indiana University–Purdue University Fort Wayne — when he joined with Mark Archer, a Fort Wayne commercial and industrial producer, to film…
American Reel (1999): Archer directs
Filmed November 1997 · released 1999 · DVD 4 November 2003
The follow-up: The success of In the Company of Men typecast Mark Archer as a producer; what he wanted was to direct. In the spring of 1997 financiers brought him a script called American Reel , written by Junior Burke and Scott…
The Wedding Pact 2: The Baby Pact (2021): a Hollywood production, on purpose
Filmed 22–26 May 2021 · premiered in Fort Wayne 12 November 2021 · released 14 June 2022
The city as itself: For most of its screen history Fort Wayne has played somewhere else — a generic posting in In the Company of Men , Chicago in American Reel . Matt Berman's The Wedding Pact 2: The Baby Pact is the exception: a…
Famous scenes: the Fort Wayne that is actually on screen
1996 — 2021
Pointable places: Because the city's productions were few, its famous scenes can be enumerated, and the documented ones are these. The last shot of In the Company of Men was filmed in the main banking lobby of the Lincoln Bank…
The production layer: industrial shops, one studio dream, and a festival
1938 — the present
How films got made here: Fort Wayne's earliest surviving motion-picture portrait is a civic one: seventeen minutes of the city filmed in 1938 — streetcars on Main Street, the Baltes and Keenan hotels, the Pennsylvania depot, the…
The micro-budget decades: horror in a dying cinema, and the $11 opening
1999 — 2013
Shot for almost nothing: Digital cameras made Fort Wayne a place where anyone could shoot a feature, and the city's independent record is mostly horror made for the price of a used car. Its emblematic production is The Spell of…
Television: segments, stock shots, and one famous courthouse
1976 — 2017
A thin but real footprint: No network series has ever been based in Fort Wayne, and the city's television record is one of visits rather than residence. The syndicated magazine format Evening Magazine , which ran nationally from…
Set here, shot elsewhere: the Fort Wayne of the story
1937 — 1968
Named, not filmed: Hollywood has set stories in Fort Wayne far oftener than it has photographed the city. The strongest case is Paramount's Appointment with Danger (shot 1949; released in the United States in 1951), in which Alan…
The claim that fails: Hoosiers was not filmed here
1986 — and every year since
A borrowed classic: No false claim in Fort Wayne's film record is hardier than the one that gives the city a piece of Hoosiers (1986), Indiana's beloved basketball picture. It appears even in professional publicity: when a…
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