There's no end to the injury that Hollywood likes to inflict on Pittsburgh. Every movie made whose setting is supposed to be here perpetuates the image of a small-town city with idiot natives who have the most peculiar, yawpish accent, extremely limited interests (Steelers, football, beer, food), bad taste in furniture, little education, and all live in dimly-lit, yellowed-with-age homes.

Pittsburghers are frequently guilty of giving the caricature more life, too:
Here's an example, made by a Pittsburgher.

https://www.youtube.com/user/pittsburghdad

Sounds like the beginning of All In The Family, and replete with dull-colored "Dad" furniture, this video series seems determined to fit as many stereotypes as it can, without providing any humor at the same time. They have a laugh track, though.

Movies have been strange about Pittsburgh. "Zack And Miri Make A Porno" made me groan, because the main characters are supposed to live where I do, which used to be an upper-middle-class, white-bread suburb outside the city. It's lost money and population since, but still. Monroeville is a separate town and is not actually part of Pittsburgh. The movie calls the high school "Monroeville High" instead of Gateway, and the high school reunion scenes were actually filmed at the junior high school -- South Junior High. Made everything look tiny. In reality, Gateway is a very large school. The people referred to themselves as "Monroevans," a stupid-sounding term no one here has ever uttered.

The characters Zack and Miri are uneducated and work for a video store. They share a dump of an apartment; in the morning the weather is so cold they struggle to start the car and use those hand-warmers sold by camping stores to unfreeze their fingers. The street scenes shown are from Pittsburgh, probably Squirrel Hill, and are very old. Monroeville is rather modern looking and has no such buildings. The director chose the oldest area of Pittsburgh to film.

Apparently in Hollywood's mind, everyone in Pittsburgh has nothing but vintage furniture from the 30s, 40s and 50s. We are supposedly caught in the past, and we dragged our furniture along!

The TV series "The Lost Room," a wonderful science fiction show, was also supposed to be taking place in Pittsburgh. Only the first couple of episodes contain any scenes of town. The main character is a police detective -- and police make very good incomes here -- but his place had the same old yellowy furniture from 40 years ago, too.

I will admit that the dim lighting is accurate in the movies. Pittsburgh gets as many overcast days as Seattle does, sometimes more. So indoor lighting is often insufficient.

But I tell you, the shadow over Pittsburgh isn't that of a dank little closet. It's the gloominess of former greatness, the gothic dark of a city with such tall buildings downtown that at certain times of day the sun won't reach the sidewalk. We really are a gothic city. We even have gargoyles on many old classic buildings. This is, after all, a place as old and established as New York City. We have our own monsters: For example, Andrew Carnegie thrived and began his fortune here, not NYC. Henry Frick too, Harry Thaw, ... and then all those zombies from the Romero movies.

(We all fail to understand why the series "The Walking Dead" is not being filmed here.)

But what's with all the yellowy furniture?