Welcome back to Movies from My Hometown, a recurring feature where one of our writers will be sharing movies that were set and/or shot near where they have lived as a personal lens into these films…

by Kate Beach, Staff Writer

I have lived in Delco since 1997, but I’m not really from here. For the uninitiated, that’s Delaware County, which sprawls out from the western borders of Philadelphia. Rowhomes and shopping corridors eventually give way to split levels on cul-de-sacs and finally to farmhouses and fields populated by cows and horses. I went to high school here, I attended Delaware County Community College, and sometimes I say “wooder” instead of water. I might be here for the rest of my life, but I’ll never have the multigenerational, often parish-based roots that many of my friends and neighbors grew up with. 

Delco is an incredibly diverse little corner of Pennsylvania. Get incredible food from just about anywhere in Upper Darby, whose township motto is “The world in one place.” Take in covered bridges and rolling hills in Newtown Square or Concordville. Stroll the quintessential small town main drag in Media. We’re home to half a million people and countless religions, cultures, and cuisines. Despite all its diversity, however, most of our moments onscreen have concerned the stereotypical version of Delco: white, working class, Catholic, almost always Irish or Italian or both. Kate Winslet played the star high school athlete turned beleaguered detective Mare Sheehan in Mare of Easttown. She talked about adopting the accent (fondly described as hoagiemouth) and subscribing to the Delco Times while she filmed here in 2020. On a more indie scale, Chris Pierdomenico’s Kevin Smith-esque Delco: The Movie follows a group of friends trying to cast off their goody two shoes images and have one crazy Delco night. And the upcoming miniseries Task, from Mare creator Brady Ingelsby (his dad played for Villanova, which is way more important here than his time in the NBA), will follow another world-weary cop, this time played by Mark Ruffalo. But before all that, there was Silver Linings Playbook. 

David O. Russell (a filmmaker who probably shouldn’t keep getting funded) brought Silver Linings Playbook to TIFF in September of 2012, with a wide release in November. It was filmed in the fall of 2011 in Upper Darby, Ridley Park, and my hometown, Lansdowne, all inner ring suburbs that feel more like the city than the bucolic towns further out. I missed it entirely because I was in college in Pittsburgh at the time. I came home in the summer, just in time for Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher to set up shop down the street from my college residence. Cruel irony. But while I was gone, Delco was busy playing itself alongside Bradley Cooper (who is from Jenkintown, we don’t claim him) and Jennifer Lawrence.

Cooper stars as Pat Solitano, recently released after eight months of court ordered psychiatric treatment. His parents, played by Robert DeNiro and Jacki Weaver, respectively, are cautiously optimistic but clearly worried and dealing with their own problems on top of Pat’s. He’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and while he’s motivated to resume his life and find the titular silver linings, there wouldn’t be much of a movie if he didn’t struggle. Struggling with him is Jennifer Lawrence as Tiffany Maxwell, a young woman with her own mental health troubles straining against her grief amid everyone’s expectations for a young widow. Shared frustrations with the world and eventually a shared project bring them together. Cooper and Lawrence are surrounded by a stacked supporting cast beyond Weaver and DeNiro, including Chris Tucker, Julia Stiles, and Anupam Kher. As far as I’m concerned, the movie is fine. Cooper and Lawrence have great chemistry, and it’s a sweet story that tends to veer away just as it starts to approach cheesiness. No one really attempts a Delco accent, not even Cooper. It’s probably better that way.

There are two locations in particular that (quite literally) hit close to home for me: The Llanerch Diner on Township Line Road, and the Lansdowne Theater on Lansdowne Avenue. The diner, a 24 hour greasy spoon that looks like it’s been there forever, was the location of an early, combative scene between Cooper and Lawrence. In the years since, the Llanerch has happily welcomed patrons looking to see where the stars once sat. As soon as you walk in the door, a framed Silver Linings Playbook poster hangs on the wall. And the booth itself is now marked with a small plaque, an unofficial historic marker. The omelette I had while doing research for this piece was pretty good. My best friend’s former neighbors were Llanerch lifers - the famed booth was their date night spot for years before Cooper and Lawrence ever graced it with their presence. For the rest of their time living in the neighborhood, it annoyed the hell out of them that their regular booth got snapped up by fans after the film’s release. That, to me, is a pure Delco reaction to any kind of celebrity that’s not Philly sports team related.

Two and a half miles away, the Lansdowne Theater is the site of another pivotal moment in Pat and Tiffany’s burgeoning relationship, and the star of an earlier montage of Pat’s morning jogs. A movie palace from 1927 that closed after an electrical fire in the 80s, its exterior was dressed up to look active again for the film. Its restoration has been the life’s work of my neighbor, and he’s now nearing the end of shepherding it into its new life as a music venue.      

I sit in the Llanerch Diner, in the Silver Linings Playbook booth, listening to a guy in an Eagles jacket complain about his job. I think about all the little landmarks of my life in Delco. The Lansdowne Theater, where my parents once tried to get “Happy birthday, Kate” on the marquee but the only guy who could do it was out of town. My best friend’s street, where I get excited every time I pick her up for a movie or a walk in the cemetery. Every other diner I spent hours in with friends, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee. I may not really be from here, but it all feels like home. 

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