Bill Wade, Post-Gazette
	Dawn Keezer, left, of the Pittsburgh Film Office, talks with John Wells, executive producer of the CBS pilot "Smith" on Liberty Avenue, Downtown, last March.

It's easy to see why a Hollywood producer would take a meeting with Dawn Keezer.

The 41-year-old director of the Pittsburgh Film Office can pack more statistics, factoids and telephone numbers into a 60-second sales pitch than many people can in an hour, which, in attention-deficit-disordered Hollywood, is a definite plus.

She's doing it right now, multitasking on the phone from L.A. in her improbably girlish voice -- "I sound like a Valley Girl, I know. It's why my career in radio never went very far," she says -- talking to a reporter while in the process of moving out of her Highland Park house, helping her future stepdaughter get ready for college and planning her wedding to former L.A. film office director Cody Cluff, which was to take place yesterday in a friend's back yard.

Oh, and she's also fighting to keep her job.

During the course of a nearly hour-long interview, Ms. Keezer laughs, she shrieks, she whispers dramatically, but mostly, she talks at warp speed and with seemingly total recall about her efforts over the past 12 years to bring film production to Western Pennsylvania, and, at the same time, she tartly dismisses her critics.

"It's the same group of people who've been after me for years," she said. "It's gotten so that 2:30 here in California has become my favorite time of day, because all my critics in Pittsburgh have gone home."

Those critics include Charlie Humphrey, executive director of Pittsburgh Filmmakers, who believes Ms. Keezer is more interested in selling Pittsburgh to Hollywood than selling Pittsburghers and that she is ignoring the needs of the region's small but vibrant local film community.

There are others, both in Hollywood and here, who believe she's just plain incompetent.

"Most producers I talk to in Hollywood say she's not good at what she does," said actor David Conrad, Pittsburgh-born star of the CBS drama "Ghost Whisperer." "Some say there's no reason to work in Pittsburgh because of this. They tell me, 'Why would I work there when I can't get what I need, when I need it?' Her relationships with the unions are bad, with the crews, the lighting, the grips. She can't get deals."

Ms. Keezer's defenders are just as passionate. The film office's board chair, Russell Streiner, said that, in a visit to Los Angeles three weeks ago by state officials seeking to market Pennsylvania's new incentives for filmmakers, "Dawn delivered every meeting they wanted, and I don't mean with some low-level accountant, but with the head of worldwide production for Disney."

Still, when Ms. Keezer announced in mid-July that she was moving to Los Angeles to run a satellite office so she could be closer to film contacts, her critics erupted. And, as it was reported that she was planning to marry Mr. Cluff, who was sentenced to three years probation in 2004 after pleading no contest to charges of embezzling funds from the Los Angeles film office, city Councilman Doug Shields called for her firing and the dissolution of the Pittsburgh Film Office's board.

Then her detractors shot off a letter to the mayor, the county chief executive and the governor, urging them to scrap Ms. Keezer's office and redirect public money to a new production office.

Latest salvoes shrugged off
In response to this latest barrage of criticism, Ms. Keezer professes incredulity.

"Did you read the part about Doug Shields, when he said he didn't want me living the good life in California?" she asked. Then, in the next breath, she seems to shrug it off.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "The film office is going to continue to do the work that we do, which," she added, her voice softening to something between a whisper and a hiss, "is really good work."

Since her days as an Air Force brat, moving from town to town, Ms. Keezer has learned to use her formidable verbal skills to make friends.

"I was always a talker. My teachers would move me because I was talking to my friends. And what did I do then? I made new friends. Hah!"

At Merced High School, in California's Central Valley, Ms. Keezer made her mark as the school's events director, "organizing the football rallies, the homecoming queen, get the groups together, get everyone working together, all that stuff."

Voted Most Spirited, Ms. Keezer went on to the University of California, Berkeley, where she majored in mass communications.

"I wanted to be the next Barbara Walters," she said; not the Barbara who axed Star Jones, she is quick to note, but the pioneering, anchorwoman Barbara of the early 1980s. "It was about talking. I talk a lot. It was about being able to tell the story, about giving the message."

After college, she put her sales skills to work, selling television ads to personal injury lawyers. Following a stint in radio, she took a job promoting Merced, Calif., "The Gateway to Yosemite," where she landed a 7-Up commercial.

Officials in the Pacific Coast town of Santa Cruz offered her a job in their film office, where she spent five years, mostly handling television movies. She also served on a marketing committee for the California film office.

"She was very professional, very warm, and she could get along with anybody. If Dawn said she was going to do something, she did it," said Ann Parker, who handled public relations for the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.

In 1994, Pittsburgh called, wondering if she was interested in the film office job, in existence for four years. There were 157 applicants, 21 semifinalists and five finalists.

"She was the last person we saw, and when she left the room, it was unanimous," recalled Mr. Streiner, who was on the search committee. He cited "her aggressiveness, the way her brain works, the way she worked on her feet," for getting her the job.

The years between 1990 and 1994 had been fat years for filming in Pittsburgh, when, at one point, five major motion pictures were shooting simultaneously in or around the city. During part of that time, Hollywood producers were boycotting New York City for financial reasons, and found parts of Pittsburgh to be a good substitute, from the brownstones of the Mexican War Streets to the Rockefeller Center-esque Mellon Square. Plus, Canada had not yet embarked on its film program, which now generously subsidizes Hollywood productions.

Then, too, there wasn't as much competition among states for movie business. While Pennsylvania has a grant program to woo filmmakers, so do Louisiana and New Mexico, with even more generous incentives.

Steady, less visible work
Her critics frequently say "nothing" has been filmed here in the past half-decade or so. Perhaps it's true that films on the scale of "Striking Distance," "Sudden Death" and "Wonder Boys" have been scarce, but since 2000, about a half dozen major, if not exactly wildly successful, motion pictures have been shot in Pittsburgh, along with four television shows. And while the big-budget films are the most visible and memorable projects of the film office, it also assists makers of industrial films , TV commercials and small films with budgets in the thousands or very low millions. They might be the less visible but steadiest part of the job.

Ms. Keezer proudly notes her successes, even if some of the glitzier projects were a few years ago. "The Mothman Prophecies," with Richard Gere? "That was a big 'get,' " she said, "one of the really fun ones." She fought hard to get "Diabolique," with Isabelle Adjani and Sharon Stone, and said her good relations with the administration of former Mayor Tom Murphy enabled her to have the Sixth Street Bridge closed for nine days for "Inspector Gadget."

In 1997, she nearly snagged "Superman," with director Tim Burton, but that project fell apart for myriad reasons. Still, "I got to walk Tim Burton through Downtown Pittsburgh, and you haven't seen Pittsburgh until you've seen it through Tim Burton's eyes."

How much of this current dispute is a rehash of the long-running argument about what the office's role is, and how much of it is about Ms. Keezer's personality?

"She is so smart, maybe in the top 2 percent of people I know," said U.S. Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Bradford Woods, who has served on the film office board since the early 1990s and counts herself a personal friend.

Her personal style is far different from her predecessor, Robert Curran, Mr. Streiner said. "He would spend more time with the local crew people. It was, 'Hey, let's go out and have a beer,' and if that's a criticism, so be it."

"She's smart, talented, but at the end of the day, everything is always about Dawn," said Mr. Humphrey, who said that, after months of negotiations over a merger of their two organizations, she balked when she realized her job would be eliminated. "She was stubbornly holding a view that couldn't look beyond how it affected her."

Ms. Keezer's annual budget is close to $400,000. Once a beneficiary of the hotel-motel tax, Ms. Keezer lost that money when it was diverted to the ballparks and convention center. Now she raises funds from the state and an annual Oscar gala, but it's not enough to woo Hollywood producers and tend to local filmmakers at the same time.

"Some people think we should help local filmmakers get money for their projects and get entree into Hollywood. It's something I would love to be able to do if the office were fully funded. But I do not have funding for independent films. We do not have money to give away."

Mr. Humphrey begs to differ.

"I don't think you have to have money to be nice to people," he said.

'Bread' controversy
Indeed, Adrienne Wehr, whose independent film, "The Bread, My Sweet," was made here, said Ms. Keezer never took her calls or visited the set of the film.

"The bottom line is, we did a beautiful film without the help of the film office, which is a shame," Ms. Wehr said. "I have never sat in a room with this woman. I am a local filmmaker and producer. We should know each other by now. All she had to do is be nice. She could have picked up the phone. She could have called."

Ms. Keezer, in turn, produced a detailed timeline compiled by her office that recorded various contacts with Ms. Wehr's company during the shoot. "Adrienne makes this stuff up, saying we didn't help her. I personally went to her set twice and was told, don't bother, it's too hot. Well, I don't go where I'm not invited."

Of Mr. Humphrey, a former friend, his comments "reflect the anger and disappointment of a scorned suitor" after she blocked his proposal to merge their organizations.

"Since that time, he has maligned the PFO board of trustees, the PFO and me, personally, with baseless allegations and malicious gossip," she wrote in an e-mail.

Another on-the-record critic is independent producer Todd Eckert, who is at work on "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," a film based on the Michael Chabon novel, which is to begin shooting next month. When he moved here five years ago, he was taken aback, he said, when she complained about the city.

"She maligned Pittsburgh," Mr. Eckert said. "She told me it was a backward, hick town. If she's not successful in getting something, she falls back on blaming the city, saying it is a backward, cronyistic place."

It never happened, Ms. Keezer said. "Those who know me know the word 'hick' is not in my vernacular."

"Who is Todd Eckert?" she asked, indignantly. "Did you ask him what he's done? He'll tell you he's made a movie in Germany. But who is he?"

He is, in fact, producing a British film called "Control," about rock musician Ian Curtis. Mr. Eckert is also a media financial consultant specializing in film and video games.

It's that kind of direct, in-your-face language that radio host John McIntire saw her employ on callers when he had her on his show last week.

"She can get nasty rather quickly," he said. "She is very high school. If you criticize her, she immediately gets personal."

Ms. Keezer shrugs off a salvo by Mr. Shields, her City Council critic who said she was keeping "lousy company" in the person of Mr. Cluff. The initial charges against him also alleged that he sent money to the Pittsburgh Film Office to support Ms. Keezer's annual fund-raising Oscar galas.

Ms. Keezer was cleared of wrongdoing, but the memory of the negative publicity rankles her.

"Nobody ever wrote in big bold headlines that the film office didn't do anything wrong. I was completely cleared, but that was never on the front page. It wasn't as good as the headlines that said, 'Lattes and Lingerie,' which accused me of buying Victoria's Secret lingerie for myself when, in fact, it was Victoria's Linens [from Indiana Township] for the Oscar party," she said.

The investigation into Mr. Cluff was "an L.A. political deal, just like this is a Pittsburgh political deal. It's done. We're moving forward."

Asked if this experience had changed her, the laugh is girlish, but with a hard, metallic note.

"She's a lot like the older one, but she was nicer back then. That's because she wasn't beat up so much."

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Correction/Clarification: (Published Aug. 1, 2006) This story about Pittsburgh Film Office director Dawn Keezer as originally published on July 30, 2006 misidentified the location of Victoria's Linens. The store is located in Indiana Township.