Rail to Reel

Washington's transit system gets three to five dozen film requests a year and grants all but a handful. A big-budget movie starring Russell Crowe is filming here now: You might have seen the cast and crew around town the past couple of weeks. Metro doesn't profit from the projects, but it gets bragging rights. And the region benefits: Last year, the District made $63 million from film and TV shoots.

Metro's requests come from all sorts: Hollywood, TV producers, charities seeking to raise money, banks making ATM commercials, government agencies doing training videos, film students shooting their theses.

McNeil, who works in Metro's media relations office, has fielded film requests for more than a dozen years. She makes sure projects have enough insurance. She reads scripts. She decides what meets standards for logistics and safety. And the rules. "I go through it and I say, 'No,' 'Yes,' 'No,' 'Yes.' "

Nicole Kidman boarding a train in last year's alien-epidemic thriller "The Invasion"? Yes.

Kidman jumping from a train full of aliens and running down the tracks to escape? No. (That shoot was moved to Baltimore.)

Morgan Freeman firing a gun out of a train window in the 2001 thriller "Along Came a Spider"? Absolutely not. (Also filmed in Baltimore, substituting special Hollywood glass in the window.)

Of the 103 requests since 2006, Metro also rejected these four: a Bollywood-type movie that wanted to film during rush hour, a magazine shoot featuring dancing and a bartender pouring drinks on a train, an advertising video for security software that flags attacks on the Metro and a short about a man thinking about blowing up a train.

Metro doesn't allow filming during rush hour or portrayals of anything illegal in the system. Officials don't want people to get the wrong idea.

Metro is working with crews from "State of Play," starring Crowe, Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams. Based on the BBC miniseries of the same title, the movie is about reporters for a fictional Washington newspaper investigating the death of a congressman's mistress.

A key scene takes place on the Metro: A character is struck by a train. Shooting took place this past weekend at the Rosslyn Station, and another shoot will occur tonight aboard two rail cars at a different station.

Train accidents are a sensitive subject: Three Metro employees were killed in a six-month period in 2006. But the script doesn't show the death, so McNeil said yes. She was initially reluctant because Rosslyn is a busy station, with 16,860 people passing through on an average weekday in February. But the film crew agreed to shoot when the system is least busy, late at night or after rush hour, and after the system is closed.

Director Kevin Macdonald, who helmed "The Last King of Scotland," wanted Rosslyn for its long escalator and its station platform. One character goes down the escalator to the platform, where trains rush by on the upper and lower levels at the same time. It's the only such configuration in the Metro system.