Fort Wayne on Screen — In the Company of Men (1997)

Fort Wayne's signature screen credit is a famous one. Neil LaBute's In the Company of Men — his feature debut, and one of the defining American independent films of the 1990s — was shot entirely in Fort Wayne in June 1996, for a reported $25,000, and went on to win the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997. The city played itself, unnamed: an airport, a tower, a zoo and a set of downtown rooms standing in for the anonymous corporate America the film indicts, which is exactly why LaBute chose it. The documented locations are these. The Lincoln Bank Tower is the film's principal interior location — its banking lobby serves for the corporation's offices, the film's final shot was made in the lobby, the protagonists' end apartment was dressed in a room off that lobby, and a rooftop shot overlooks the Allen County Courthouse across the street. The opening sequence was filmed at Fort Wayne International Airport, and scenes were filmed at the Fort Wayne Children's Zoo; production accounts also place scenes at Cindy's Diner, a working diner downtown, and at the Pfeiffer House at 434 West Wayne Street. Accounts of the shoot differ on its length — eleven days in several tellings; the production report in Filmmaker Magazine describes three weeks of filming in June 1996 —.

Beyond LaBute's film, no other nationally distributed feature with documented Fort Wayne locations was established in this section's research; the city's places otherwise reach national screens through broadcasts from the places in this chapter — the Coliseum, Parkview Field and the riverfront — and through the Appleseed legend, which belongs to the Folklore chapter. In the Company of Men remains the Fort Wayne location film: nearly thirty years on, the Lincoln Bank Tower lobby is still the most famous Fort Wayne interior ever photographed for the screen.

Sources: Filmmaker Magazine, Fall 1996 production report (three weeks' filming, June 1996; Fort Wayne International Airport and Fort Wayne Children's Zoo locations); Wikipedia, "Lincoln Bank Tower" (lobby, final shot, apartment and rooftop locations); Sundance Film Festival records (Filmmakers Trophy, 1997); contemporary accounts for the $25,000 budget and the June 1996 shoot.