The official poster for “The Baltimorons,” the indie romcom set in Baltimore during the holiday season, includes a faint, somewhat ghostly background image of the late Francis Scott Key Bridge. It’s not a gratuitous tribute, but a reference to something that actually appears in the much-buzzed-about movie.
“One of my favorite things that we did was a scene where we’re on a crabbing boat, putting around where the Key Bridge was,” says David Bonnett Jr., a Baltimore native who worked on the film’s production in December 2023, a few months before a massive container ship struck the bridge, causing its collapse. “It was our last night of filming, and we actually got the bridge in a shot. I don’t want to spoil anything for anybody because it’s a great moment on screen. But it’s pretty surreal to think about, because it was just a few months after that that we lost it. . . .”
Six members of a road crew died in the bridge’s collapse, early on March 26, 2024.
When “The Baltimorons” opens next month, audiences will see what is likely the last cinematic capture of the Key Bridge at night.
And they’ll see a lot of other Baltimore scenes, including the Miracle of 34th Street in Hampden, aglow for the holidays.
Bonnett, a 37-year-old Calvert Hall and University of Maryland graduate, worked as a producer during the two-week location filming of the Jay Duplass-directed film. Negotiating a scene on busy 34th Street with the film’s stars, Michael Strassner and Liz Larsen, was not a problem.
“It was actually fairly easy,” Bonnett says. “We scheduled it in a way where it wasn’t the weekend, when it’s mobbed. It was like a Sunday or Monday, with enough crowd to be lively but not enough where we would be bumping into people and it would be too loud. … We reached out to the neighborhood, and quite a few neighbors were willing to help us out. And I think we really did capture an authentic 34th Street at Christmas.”
Set on Christmas Eve, “The Baltimorons” is the story of a sobered-up former improv comic (played by Strassner) who, because of a dental emergency, meets an older woman (a dentist played by Larsen) and the two embark on a holiday adventure.
Bonnett is listed as a producer of the film, along with Drew Langer and Strassner.
Strassner is a graduate of Loyola Blakefield and, like Bonnett, attended the University of Maryland. But the two men did not work together until they entered the same professional and social circles in Los Angeles about 10 years ago.
“We knew each other in college, but we really connected through film and being in Los Angeles, and then just being in touch throughout the years,” Bonnett says.
During his time in California, Bonnett worked as a production assistant on Paul Reubens’ “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” before becoming Reubens’ on-set assistant. He later served as manager of Reubens’ 35th anniversary tour of “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” and as associate producer on the HBO documentary, “Pee-wee as Himself.” He worked for Reubens for about eight years, on and off.
He was also doing other things, working in location management for movies and shows, including the Netflix series, “House of Cards.”
A couple of years ago, Bonnett produced Strassner’s short film, “Big Boy,” that premiered at a film festival in Los Angeles. “I had shot a couple other shorts with him throughout the years,” he says, “but that was one of the bigger ones where [Strassner] was coming with his more advanced skill set and I was coming with mine, and it kind of got some eyeballs on it.”
Strassner, Bonnett found, is gifted as a writer, director and actor. All three came together for “The Baltimorons.”
“Michael just likes to make things, especially with people he likes to work with,” says Bonnett. “And he’s very amenable to just shooting things and staying creative.”
Duplass, an accomplished director and actor, shares a credit with Strassner for the “Baltimorons” screenplay. It was after the Hollywood writers strike ended in September 2023 that the movie got a green light.
“I got a call,” says Bonnett. “I was like, ‘All right, we’re doing this thing.’ And soon we were filming. It was very, very much guerrilla style — you know, shooting from the hip.”
Bonnett calls himself a “nuts and bolts” producer. He had grown up in Fells Point — lives there again now — and knew his way around the streets where Duplass and Strassner wanted to shoot scenes.
“I have a ton of resources here, and kind of just tapped into all my favors and friendships and my network,” Bonnett says. “Honestly, I’ve worked on a ton of big studio stuff, and, you know, smaller, independent things. And this one, I don’t know why, but everything seemed to go right where we didn’t even have the time for anything to malfunction — even the weather. Our movie takes place in 24 hours, and if we had a rainy day that would have not worked out for continuity. Yeah, everything had to go right, and everything pretty much did.”
And no one Bonnett encountered in Baltimore found the film’s title offensive?
“Honestly, people were amused,” he says. “Michael had some T-shirts [with the movie title] made for the cast and crew, and I wore one to the airport, and some guy stopped me, and he was like, ‘I gotta take a picture of this. This is great.’ I think a lot of people are gonna really dig it.”
After it opens in New York Sept. 5, “The Baltimorons” gets its Baltimore opening at the Senator Theatre on Sept. 10.
Dan Rodricks’ column appears weekly in the Fishbowl. He can be reached at djrodricks@gmail.com or via danrodricks.com
I want a Baltimoron tshirt! pleeezzzz