TV Talk: Filmed-in-Pittsburgh ‘Cha Cha Real Smooth’ dances onto Apple TV+

A local mall became writer/director filmmaker Cooper Raiff’s soundstage substitute when he filmed 10 of the 22 production days of “Cha Cha Real Smooth” at the Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills in late summer 2021.

“Almost all of the party [scenes] were set somewhere inside, like, a frickin’ [shuttered] Pac Sun or a hibachi grill or something,” Raiff said in a recent phone interview. “We had to get creative but it ended up being the perfect space for us to just set up shop.”

Streaming Friday on Apple TV+, Raiff also stars in “Cha Cha” as Andrew, a 22-year-old college grad back home with his family in New Jersey and without a clear life plan. But he’s an ace at getting parties started, so he begins working as a hype man for local bar and bat mitzvah parties. In the process, he falls for Domino (Dakota Johnson), whose daughter, Lola (Vanessa Burghardt), is on the autism spectrum.

A charming, wistful coming-of-age story, this R-rated film delivers a thoughtful character study, the kind of low-budget movie that’s become increasingly rare in an era of $200 million superhero monstrosities. Kudos to Apple TV+ for snapping up “Cha Cha” for $15 million at January’s Sundance Film Festival and giving it a home.

Raiff said Pennsylvania’s film tax credits, combined with producer Jeff Valeri’s positive experience filming “Sweet Girl” in Western Pennsylvania, led Raiff to cast Pittsburgh as New Jersey.

“There was a moment where we were going to set the whole movie in Pittsburgh because we realized there’s a Jewish community in Squirrel Hill and it had a lot of the same sensibilities, but at the end of the day, it didn’t have that depressing delirium thing that New Jersey has,” said Raiff, who grew up in Dallas. “I think [Pittsburgh] would have been a little bit too charming for the setting and so we ended up just trying to cheat it [as New Jersey] but the experience making a movie [in Pittsburgh] was so great because the crew was so exceptionally great, so talented and so hard-working.”

In addition to Pittsburgh Mills, “Cha Cha” filmed scenes at The Maverick hotel in East Liberty, where hotel rooms were converted into pre-production offices before the move to Pittsburgh Mills. “Cha Cha” also shot at Bethel Park Community Center and private residences in Upper St. Clair and Mt. Lebanon.

Raiff, a 25-year-old film wunderkind who rose to prominence on critical acclaim for his 2020 movie “S#!%house,” said “Cha Cha” started with his desire to explore the story of a mother whose [life] stages will always be defined by her disabled child. Domino was inspired by Raiff’s mom and Lola by Raiff’s sister who has the rare condition holoprosencephaly, in which the brain doesn’t develop normally during pregnancy.

“It ended up being a movie about two people helping each other get strong for these very different stages in their life,” Raiff said. “Freud would have a lot to say about the movie [because] Domino is based on my mom. I will say I didn’t have any intention of acting in the movie, so it didn’t start out weird.”

Producers Johnson and Ro Donnelly were fans of Raiff’s “S#!%house,” which he also acted in, and they saw “Andrew as this weirdly specific character that was going to be hard to translate with another person, so we just went for it,” Raiff said.

Enlisting Burghardt, a terrific young actress who is from New Jersey, as Lola proved a pivotal piece of the casting puzzle.

“It’s her first on-camera role and when I saw her [audition] tape, I cried really hard,” Raiff said. “Vanessa was much older than the character we had written and I knew the script was going to [have to] change a ton, but I knew she was Lola.”

Burghardt, who, like her character is on the autism spectrum, said she was impressed with the authenticity of the “Cha Cha” script.

“I’d never seen an autistic girl in a script that had depth as a person. She wasn’t a plot device. She wasn’t there for anyone else’s benefit. She was her own person,” said Burghardt, who had input as Raiff aged up the Lola character. “Cooper would do this thing where he would go on Zoom with me and say that we were going to rehearse. But we actually never ended up running lines. He would just ask for my opinion about certain lines [of dialogue] and then I would see him look down for a second and write something down and then he would pop back up. So I think he was trying to get my input without putting pressure on me.”

Burghardt, who stayed at the TRYP Hotel in Lawrenceville while filming, has a favorite memory of her time in Pittsburgh: “I really enjoyed getting to the record stores, because in New Jersey there are only a few, but I found so many in Pittsburgh. At one called The Attic [in Millvale] I found a Foo Fighters record from 1999 that I thought I was never going to find.”

Although Raiff is not Jewish, he went to a Dallas school from kindergarten through 12th grade that was 40% Jewish and in seventh grade he spent most Saturday nights at bar or bat mitzvah parties.

“I had my first kiss at a bar mitzvah at an aquarium by some stinky penguins,” Raiff recalled. “And we had this one party starter who went to every party and he was, like, this 40-plus-year-old dude. A lot of my childhood was defined by this distinct outsider perspective of the Jewish community. Sometimes I was envious.”

Local actors cast in “Cha Cha” include Alison Weissgall, Jonathan Visser and 2021 Carnegie Mellon grad Amara Pedroso.

Next, Raiff is writing a hockey movie, “The Trashers,” which is based on the true story of Jimmy Galante who bought his 18-year-old son a hockey team in Danbury, Conn. Raiff said Galante, who will be played by David Harbour (“Stranger Things”), was one of the real-life inspirations for Tony Soprano so there’s some money laundering going on at that hockey team, but Raiff said, “It’s an amazing father-son story.”

In addition, Raiff is working on several potential TV series.

“What I’ve learned is that TV shows take a long time to get made,” Raiff said. “With indie movies, there’s the constant threat of it being shut down. And the thing with TV is the development process is truly never-ending seemingly, but once it’ going, it’s going.”