"Look at this! said Marcia Sotorrio, Paterson's director of the division of cultural affairs, indicating the second floor of a bank building. "Look at this! Look at this! Look at that!"

Like a Kalashnikov spitting bullets, she points in rapid succession to scrolls, columns, carvings, cornices, balconies, fleur-de-lis ornamentation.

"This is what filmmakers have discovered 25 minutes from New York," Sotorrio said.

And that was just one building, on one street, on one day in Paterson — Thursday, March 28, the day that film crews were turning Colt Street into a replica of the 1940s Lodz ghetto for an Amazon TV series about Nazi hunters.

"The Hunt," starring Al Pacino and executive produced by Jordan Peele, is only one of many film projects scheduled to shoot in Paterson this year.

This aging city of old silk mills, engine factories and a pretty spectacular waterfall has suddenly become the apple of Hollywood's eye. Some 23 productions, of all kinds, were filmed there in 2018, and this year is on track to equal or top it, Sotorrio said.

That prospect has made city fathers and mothers — unused to positive attention after decades of neglect — almost giddy.

"Paterson is perc-u-lating," said mayor Andre Sayegh gleefully, on March 28. "And it's about to pop."

Among the other projects, finalized or prospective, lining up to visit to the Passaic County seat this year:

♦ "Newark" — a.k.a."The Many Saints of Newark" — the much anticipated "Sopranos" prequel.

♦ "The Irishman," the Martin Scorsese mobster film, starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, about the killing of Jimmy Hoffa.

♦ "Coming 2 America," with Eddie Murphy starring in the sequel to his 1988 comedy.

♦ "The Plot Against America," HBO's miniseries based on the prescient Philip Roth novel about an alternate 1940s America in which president Charles Lindbergh is discovered to be secretly working for Nazi Germany.

♦ "Real Housewives of New Jersey" (probably shooting late spring or early summer).

♦ "West Side Story." This is the big news: the Steven Spielberg remake of the classic musical, which for good measure will star Clifton's Rachel Zegler as Maria. Things look promising for a June "prep" and an August shoot, said Michael Jackson, president of the public works supervisors' union. Spielberg — incognito — was in town, two weekends ago, scouting locations.

"He took his walk, about four or five blocks and then doubled back for a couple of them, and took pictures with his phone," said Jackson, who was with Spielberg's entourage.

Spielberg, he says, was especially impressed by the two parking lots at West and East Veterans Place, which seem strong contenders for the vacant lots where the Jets and the Sharks, the juveniles in this modern "Romeo and Juliet," do their delinquenting.

"If it goes the way we think, it could be a major setting for the movie," Jackson said.

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A history of filmmaking

Film crews have not, in years past, been unknown in Paterson. "The Purple Rose of Cairo" (1985) "Lean on Me" (1989) and "The Preachers Wife" (1996) were all shot there.

But the recent burst of activity may have more to do with "Paterson" (2016), the offbeat Jim Jarmusch comedy about a Paterson poet named Paterson (Adam Driver) that amounted to a kind of grungy love letter to the city. Jarmusch is a filmmaker's filmmaker: his use of Paterson (though ironically, much of the movie was made in Westchester, Rockland and Queens) may have put the city on the radar of other directors.

"It certainly helped spur interest in the city," said Steven Gorelick, executive director of the New Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission.

But the other big thing happened this past July 3. The Garden State Film and Digital Media Jobs Act, signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy, provides a 30 to 35 percent tax credit for film companies, with a 2 percent bonus if the crew meets diversity standards. Previously, the rate had been 20 percent.

And New Jersey's earlier $10 million a year program cap has now been raised to $75 million a year — enabling more and more high-end productions. All of this makes New Jersey newly competitive with New York as a filmmaking destination. Though of course, New York is still in the game.

"New York is excited to continue supporting the industry through its $420 million incentive that’s been renewed through 2024," said Adam Kilduff, a spokesman for Empire State Development, which administers the New York State Film Tax Credit Program.

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New Jersey, as well, offers tax credits for salaries, including so-called above-the-line salaries (directors, producers, principal actors) capped at $500,000 each. New York has no equivalent. And New Jersey offers convenience to film crews — for whom location shoots on the streets of New York can be a logistical nightmare. "That makes New Jersey very attractive," Sayegh said.

Newark and Jersey City ("Joker," "The Enemy Within," which also shot scenes in Paterson) are among the Jersey towns that have benefited from this new arrangement. But Paterson may be the most unlikely beneficiary of all.

"Every morning when I come in, I drive up Market Street and I see all the beautiful buildings," Sotorrio said. "And they're all yelling out, 'We're here! We want to be discovered!' Paterson was missing love. Love and attention from the outside world."

A town with 'good bones'

For decades, this storied city on the Great Falls — America's first factory town, founded by Alexander Hamilton, no less — has been written off by many outsiders as a crumbling, crime-ridden relic of America's industrial past. In 2008, the citizens of West Paterson voted to rename their city Woodland Park, to avoid the taint of the Paterson name.

Ironically, it is the big old factories, gritty brick warehouses, elaborate Beaux-Arts municipal buildings — all those seeming white elephants from the 19th century — that have made Paterson so attractive to filmmakers.

"Paterson has good bones," Sayegh said. "It's the architecture that's drawing interest from some of these films scouts."

Paterson can do duty for any location. Already, in various movies, it's been Poland, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, London, Manhattan, and of course Paterson.

"What attracts people to Paterson is the architecture," Gorelick said. "It's one-of-a-kind, spectacular. There are sections of Paterson where you're walking into the past. If you're doing a period movie, it's an ideal place to shoot."

Case in point: "The Hunt," in which Paterson's Colt and Ellison Streets were dressed to look like the German-created ghetto in Poland where Jews were walled off from the rest of the city.

On Colt Street Friday, near City Hall, the road bed was overlaid with red earth. Piles of suitcases, on old-fashioned wagons, evoked the grim fate of refugees. A sign in a store window, on Ellison Street, read "CHENSZCZYNSKI & JOSIPOWICZ."

"See? Polish," Sotorrio said.

Overhead, a cable was being strung between two four-story buildings, a block apart. This is where the camera would travel for aerial shots. Trailers, cherry-pickers, klieg lights were everywhere. Barriers closed off either end of Colt Street.

"People say, 'What's going on? Are they fixing the streets?' 'No it's a movie,' " Sotorrio said. "These are exciting times, really exciting times."

It couldn't come too soon for Paterson, a city that is still challenged by a high crime rate and low cash reserves. In 2019, the city is depending on $33 million in transitional state aid to balance its budget. In January, the town came near to sacking 200 cops and firefighters (this was averted).

Mayor Sayegh, elected in May 2018, and his administration are staking a lot on the future of Paterson as a filmmaking destination. Gorelick gives him much credit for courting filmmakers, and partnering with the Motion Picture Commission.

"The mayor's been spectacularly cooperative, and that's been the key." Gorelick said. "And the administration is incredibly proactive."

Paterson charges filmmakers $750 for up to five hours, and $1,500 for five hours or more, per day — a competitive rate. And word is starting to get around, mayor Sayegh said. "People are talking Paterson up," he said. "They're good-mouthing Paterson."

But the mayor is most excited about what he calls the "multiplier effect."

"There are myriad benefits to having a film crew here in the city," Sayegh said. "There's the food industry. The people who are working on these films have to eat. Then there's your retail, your bodegas, the grocery stories. They're going to benefit. Hardware. They gotta buy supplies. So the little hardware stores will benefit as well."

There's also security. Which means overtime, paid by the film companies, for local cops.

"The city can't afford to give overtime," said Rory Buchanan, a retired police officer in charge of off-duty police workers. "So I'm happy the guys are getting overtime. They got families. They got sick kids. I think it's great for the city."

And there are a dozen picayune expenses, connected with location shooting, that add up to more revenue for Paterson.

On Thursday, dozens of parking meters were covered with bags, and signs that read "EMERGENCY, NO PARKING. Towaway Zone. Police Department."

Translation? Money.

"The parking authority makes money on this," Sotorrio said. "Each meter is $10."

Email: beckerman@northjersey.com; Twitter: @jimbeckerman1