'The Tender Bar,' with George Clooney and Ben Affleck in credits, opens this week, with Worcester and Fitchburg scenes

Roughly around the 75-minute mark of the new movie “The Tender Bar,” recent Yale graduate JR (Tye Sheridan) sits in the lobby of The New York Times, waiting for his shot to get his foot in the door of the paper.

Five minutes later, JR scores his first byline in The Times.

And in those several minutes in between, director George Clooney recreates the hustling, bustling newsroom of the Gray Lady in its heyday.

But the real kicker is, none of these scenes were filmed anywhere near the 52-story New York Times Building in Midtown Manhattan, but inside the old Commerce High School building off Main Street in downtown Worcester.

“The Tender Bar,” which opened in U.S. theaters (though not in Central Massachusetts) Wednesday, will stream Jan. 7 on Amazon Prime Video, is based on the memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer J.R. Moehringer, who got his start as a copy boy at The New York Times in the mid-1980s.

Scenes in Worcester

On April 12, Clooney with Sheridan and a cast of extras filmed the NYT scenes in Worcester.

As he nervously waits to make his case, JR sits in a room in which the back wall is adorned with the words The New York Times in all its engraved Old English glory.

Also in the room with the aspiring journalist is a potted plant, coffee table and a sofa set that cries (and possibly died in) the 1970s.

Wearing a wide tie, checkered shirt and corduroy blazer that is as haphazardly matched as it sounds, JR is introduced to the daily grind of daily newspapers, an office workplace with open Venetian blinds and suspended light fixtures, bulky white PCs and electric typewriters, landlines and deadlines, egos and eccentrics.

And in the heart of the newsroom is the overlapping of chatter and noise made from a packed room of reporters conducting interviews on the phone, scribbling away on notepads, fingers tapping away on keyboards and pounding their fists on their respective Formica desktops.

For an outsider to the news industry, it might look like sheer chaos. For JR and any true journalist, it’s an adrenaline rush.

Capturing the day and age when print media was still king, Clooney also recreates the composing room (dwarfed in comparison to the former Telegram & Gazette composition room at 20 Franklin St. that occupied a half of the third floor), a place where stories are cut, pasted and laid out on an illuminated table for the finished page.

In a brief but telling scene that will make any newspaperman or newspaperwoman nostalgic, the young, idealistic JR walks through the center of the newsroom with a beaming smile on his face, while a dozen or so reporters feverishly do their part to deliver “all the news that’s fit to print” for the next day.

For the NYT scene, Dan Diaz and John Keough at Westerman Prop Warehouse of Worcester provided vintage ashtrays, coat racks, computers, credenzas, desks, desk phones, lamps, printers, typewriters, trash cans, wall-hangings and water coolers to dress up the set.

Back in April, a wardrobe worker was seen carrying a bundle of office garb, including polyester dress shirts and wide ties, into the old Worcester school, while a prop person pushed a cart with “’86 NY Times Paper Fillers,” files, notebooks, folders and other office desk décor.

In “The Tender Bar,” Ben Affleck plays the uncle whom everybody wishes they had. Affleck’s Uncle Charlie is the father figure to his nephew JR, played by Sheridan as an adult and an adorable Daniel Ranieri as a child.

When we first see Affleck, he’s suited up in an orange baseball jersey playing softball for “The Dickens,” which takes its name from the local watering hole where Affleck is a bartender.

The year is 1973, and JR and his mother (Lily Rabe) are moving back to “grandpa,” the family’s foul-mouthed patriarch played with chiseled perfection by Christopher Lloyd.

Despite his mother apologizing profusely about the living arrangements, JR immediately falls in love with the colorful, cramped home full of pasta dinners, profanity-laced tirades, pop tunes, Pabst Blue Ribbon (in 1970s-style cans) and a profound love for each other.

Although we’re supposed to be in Long Island, Lloyd’s home is actually in Lowell and The Dickens is Jacob's Corner Bar & Grille in Beverly.

Fitchburg scenes

The week before the Worcester shoot, Clooney filmed Affleck and Ranieri on Maverick and Cane streets in Fitchburg.

For the Fitchburg shoot, Clooney shot scenes with Affleck behind the wheel of a vintage baby-blue Cadillac convertible with his nephew sitting in the middle of Uncle Charlie’s grownup buddies Bobo and Joey D (Michael Braun and Matthew Delamater, respectively). Clooney films Affleck picking them up at their houses several times.

To symbolize the passage of time, Affleck changes his vintage garb, ranging from V-neck shirts to chestnut brown leather jackets in between shots. The actor also grows a beard and dons eyeglasses in the course of the film.

By film’s end, Uncle Charlie’s Cadillac, which is most prominently seen in the scenes shot in Fitchburg, becomes a Springsteenian symbol of independence, endless opportunities and the unchartered open roads ahead.

“The Tender Bar” is the last of three film projects with scenes filmed in Worcester and surrounding areas to be released in November and December.

“Don’t Look Up,” directed and written by former Worcester resident Adam McKay and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep, was released earlier this month.

Showtime’s weekly 10-part series “Dexter: New Blood” started last month and concludes Jan. 9.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: 'The Tender Bar,' with George Clooney and Ben Affleck in credits, opens this week, with Worcester and Fitchburg scenes