For Philly scene scout, an Oscar hot streak

Dan Gorman thinks places are like people: A street corner pulsates, a freight train line lumbers, a dark, dank rowhouse aches.

It's a view of the inanimate world that enlivens the big screen. Gorman is a locations scout whose reconnaissance work shaped not only the acclaimed Creed, up for a 2016 best supporting actor Oscar, but three other films with Academy Award nominations or wins that were shot in the region in recent years: Foxcatcher, Silver Linings Playbook, and The Lovely Bones.

Gorman, a Catholic-gone-public kid from Drexel Hill, loves to play scene sleuth. He stealthily influences movies by taking scripts and setting out to find oh-so-perfect spots for filming.

"I think every place tells a story," says Gorman, 57, an Upper Darby High School and University of Pennsylvania grad who toyed with cartooning before choosing moving pictures as his medium.

He forages for visuals in cities, villages, and farms across the country, carrying a camera to capture snippets, spending anywhere from a few weeks to eight months per film.

He has been on a hot streak for a good decade, with Creed and Silver Linings his most sentimental for their connection to his roots as Delco boy by address, Philly guy at heart.

In Creed, Gorman picked the sad Grays Ferry rowhouse that embodies the aging, ailing Rocky's decline. In Silver Linings, he found the house on South Madison Avenue near West Chester Pike in Upper Darby where Robert DeNiro's Eagles-crazed family lived.

Oh, and he negotiated nearly 100 contracts and agreements to shut down West Chester's Gay Street for one May day so that Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston could run through fake snow in Marley & Me. All that work, he said, "for a five- to 10-second shot."

In each place he finds, Gorman sees soul where others see only real estate.

"Think of the four major cities on the Northeast Corridor as four brothers," he says. "Washington is the connected, government guy. Boston is that intellectual brother. New York is the Money-Everybody-Loves guy. And Philadelphia is, like, the forgotten guy."

If anything, Gorman has done everything to make Philadelphia anything but that forgotten place.

Center stage in Creed: a rowhouse he found under a freight line at 25th and Federal Streets. There, Sylvester Stallone, nominated for best supporting actor, lived as a beaten-down Rocky, struggling with a 20-step stoop.

"He's old," Gorman explains, "and it's all about his mortality."

Gorman grew up in the 1960s and '70s as one of four boys and two girls on Albemarle Street, in a section of Upper Darby Township not far from the West Philadelphia line.

"In our neighborhood, you were either Catholic or Public - which really meant you were Catholic," he said, jokingly, "but went to public school."

Creativity was in the family gene pool, even if his father, Joe, worked a bunch of jobs while trying to earn a living as a graphic artist. His mother, Patricia, was a secretary at Penn.

After school, "us kids, we'd sit at the dining room table and draw," he said. "We'd draw all the time."

Only a few days after graduating from Penn in '82, Gorman moved to Los Angeles. After a start as a runner and production assistant, he found himself working locations.

He belongs to a union of location managers, but hustles as an independent contractor. Word of mouth is key to landing new gigs.

You see a place. Peek through the windows. Is the space right? Is the owner game? You search tax records. And then, if you're sure the place is gold, put the hard-soft sell on the director to use it.

With Creed, this went very smoothly, all around.

Whenever Gorman knocked on a door, the conversation went like this:

Gorman: "I'm making a movie. It's called Creed."

Person: "About the [rock] band?"

Gorman: "No. It's really Rocky 7."

Person (smiling): "Ohhh. Rocky!"

Even the choice of Max's Steaks at Broad and Erie came together somewhat serendipitously.

Creed director Ryan Coogler wanted protagonist Adonis Johnson to go on his first date at a Chinese restaurant in an African American neighborhood. But when the director and the scout stumbled upon Max's, Coogler changed course then and there.

On the totem pole of filmmaking, Gorman likes to say, "I'm like the grass."

That low-key role suits him. Recently, he was driving "in the middle of nowhere" in Georgia, scouting for Hidden Figures, a film to star Octavia Spencer and Taraji P. Henson.

He will watch the Oscars on Sunday, but times are busy in the middle of nowhere. He moved to Atlanta five weeks ago when the Philly filmscape became barren and assignments hard to find.

"I'm going to stay here," he said, "as long as I keep working."

mpanaritis@phillynews.com

215-854-2431@Panaritism