Diamond Theatre of Ligonier showing locally filmed thriller, 'The Pale Blue Eye'

Dec. 21—It's unusual for a small-town theater that shows movies mainly on the weekends to screen a big-budget film on its premiere date.

The Diamond Theatre of Ligonier has scored such a coup with "The Pale Blue Eye," opening nationwide on Friday. A screening is set for 8 p.m. in the theater at 210 W. Main St.

The movie will be added to the Netflix catalog on Jan. 6.

There was a particular reason for the theater's booking agent to push hard to land the movie, according to theater owner Leigh Ann McCulty: Some scenes were filmed at the nearby Compass Inn Museum.

"We told our agent right away when it was filming near our town, in Laughlintown, and that we'd love to have it," she said. "We had our fingers crossed, and luckily everything was approved. We're really excited about it."

"The Pale Blue Eye," an R-rated thriller set in 1830, stars Christian Bale as a veteran detective hired to discreetly investigate a series of murders at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. He is aided in his work by a young cadet named Edgar Allan Poe, played by Harry Melling.

The Compass Inn's blacksmith shop stood in for Benny's Haven, a fictional tavern frequented by members of the West Point community, and the setting for conversation between Bale and Melling's characters.

The actors and the movie crew were on site from Nov. 28 to Dec. 23, 2021, said Theresa Gay Rohall, executive director of the Ligonier Valley Historical Society, which operates the restored late-18th-century stagecoach stop.

Rohall will be paying close attention to the food served in the tavern scenes, because she was responsible for preparing it — and not in a kitchen with all the modern conveniences, but in the historical site's period-authentic cookhouse with its 1799 beehive oven.

She was assisted by her sister, Michelle Gay of McKeesport.

"They were thrilled that the food was being authentically cooked just feet away from where they were filming," Rohall said. "They enjoyed watching the process of the food being cooked when they weren't filming, especially Christian Bale, because he's such a method actor and he loves everything to be extremely authentic.

"One of the producers said they'd never been on a film set where the food was cooked authentically right there."

Three long days

Rohall and her sister spent three long days in the cookhouse as the tavern scenes were filmed.

"We started at 4 a.m. getting things ready, and they were filming until 11:30 or midnight," she said. "We had a schedule to follow — you need to have this ready at this time and this ready at that time. Sometimes, that time didn't happen until an hour or two later."

Those three days were preceded by a month of prep, during which Rohall made test dishes for the film's property master, Kris Peck.

"I'd make a dish, take photographs of it and send it to him, and he would approve. I had to get it just right," she said. "I'd play with it ahead of time, so by the time they were filming, we knew exactly what the director was looking for."

The dishes included roast duck, turkey legs and rabbit, fresh-baked rolls and roasted root vegetables.

"It was a winter scene, so they were all things that would have been available at that time of year," Rohall said.

While most of the foods were easy to source, she had to go to Wholey's in Pittsburgh's Strip District for the rabbit.

She won't know which of the dishes survived the editing process until she sees the movie.

"None of it may even show up, because you don't know what they're going to cut," she said. "And if it doesn't, I still have pictures, and I cooked it."

In addition to cooking, Rohall served as site coordinator during filming.

"I was the one to approve things, daily answering questions for multiple departments, working with contacts, where they were allowed to put equipment and park trucks," she said. "Anything that was historically sensitive, I had to see that they were not harming it in any way — even to the point, if a hole needed to be dug, we had to oversee that because they might uncover an artifact."

The rewards were worth the effort, though.

"It was tiring, long days and a lot of work, even before the film crew moved in," Rohall said. "Everyone was so wonderful and so respectful, and we met people from all across the country, from Hollywood, that couldn't have been nicer.

"And the Pittsburgh Film Office, I can't talk highly enough about them."

McCulty said she has been getting questions about the screening from people as far away as Pittsburgh.

"I think we'll see a lot of new faces on Friday, people who didn't know this theater existed," she said. "I hope they'll make a night of it, not just come to the movie, but go out to dinner and do a little shopping beforehand.

"Then, hopefully, they'll say, 'What a cute town. This is something we have to come back and do again.' "

In addition to Friday's screening, "The Pale Blue Eye" will show at 8 p.m. Dec. 30 and 7 p.m. Jan. 1 in the Diamond Theatre.

For information, visit diamondtheatre.com.

Shirley McMarlin is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Shirley by email at smcmarlin@triblive.com or via Twitter .