When Boston's received the Hollywood treatment in the past, production companies have often shot our fair city superficially. Film and TV crews would visit for only a few days, grabbing some exteriors--a Customs House here; a Beacon Hill pub façade there; and, in the case of Good Will Hunting, enough shots of the Red Line crossing the Charles to make you think it's an el--while the bulk of the footage was shot in a cheaper city like Toronto, or at an L.A. studio or back lot. Attempts to crank up the local color mainly consisted of out-of-town actors mercilessly butchering our beloved accent.

Well, Bostonians waiting for a realistic portrayal of the Hub can rejoice. Flying way under Tinseltown's radar is On Broadway, an independent film with a homespun storyline about an aspiring playwright who's mounting his show in a Boston bar, knitting family and community together. The movie not only was wholly shot around Boston, but also made by an entirely local team of producers, financers and creative talent. Best of all, the cast knows how to do our wicked hard patois justice: "Open your mouth and never close it," quips Saturday Night Live star (and Burlington native) Amy Poehler, who appears with her husband, Will Arnett.

The $1 million movie features plenty of familiar faces besides homegirl Poehler. There's Belmont-bred funnyman Mike O'Malley, star of the CBS sitcom Yes, Dear; Watertown's Eliza Dushku, best known for her work in Bring It On and Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and Dorchester's Robert Wahlberg, older brother to Mark and Donnie. Headlining the cast is erstwhile New Kid on the Block and Jamaica Plain native Joey McIntyre, at 33 not so much a kid anymore and aiming for serious acting gigs.

The ensemble of area actors gives the film a genuine local flavor. As O'Malley points out, "Boston has a very authentic feel to its corner of the world that you don't get in Toronto." With this cast, "you have people who know the jargon, the accent, the place." In other words, the movie has street cred.

So the logical question is, what attracted these namebrand actors to the project? The first answer: the film's crew, led by writer-director and West Roxbury native Dave McLaughlin. The film, which McLaughlin describes as a "blend of heart and humor," is partly based on his real-life experience directing a play called God Willing in the back room of the Burren in Davis Square. It's a movie about taking risks--a subject that McLaughlin knows intimately. When he took a two-month leave of absence from his job with the Boston Redevelopment Authority to direct the script he'd been working on for six years, his only previous credit was writing the screenplay for 1998's Southie.

To overcome his jitters, McLaughlin rallied Boston-area industry veterans to the cause. "I wanted to surround myself with people who were much more talented than me in their disciplines," he says. Enter executive producer Kris Meyer of Quincy, who helped run Farrelly brothers productions like Fever Pitch and Stuck On You; L.A.-based cinematographer and South Boston native Terrence Hayes; actor-producer and Cantabrigian Lance Greene; producer Mark Hankey, owner of Picture Park Productions, Boston's largest commercial film company; and producer Charlie Harrington, of Cohasset, a location manager for films like Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Last Samurai.

He may be a rookie, but McLaughlin has earned the team's respect. "Dave was a natural. I could tell at the first meeting that he was a director," says Harrington, who's currently working on another locally shot directorial debut, Ben Affleck's Gone, Baby, Gone. "Dave knew he was writing a million-dollar movie. He thought about limited locations and the number of times you have to move the company."

"We're shooting [what should be] a $5 million film for $1 million," adds Mark Hankey. "Dave is just such a genuine guy that people want to jump in and help." In fact, most actors took a cut from their going rate to be part of McLaughlin's vision.

With a solid cast and crew in place, On Broadway seemed ready to roll in the fall of 2005--until the bucks suddenly fell through. On to Plan B. Charlie Harrington shopped the script around, and it eventually made its way to Beverly's Henry Bertolon, who made his fortune in the technology industry. He and his wife, Donna, retired early and were interested in doing a movie. The first-time movie mogul agreed to bankroll a first-time director.

"We liked the fact that it was going to be produced right here in Boston," Henry Bertolon says, on location as an extra at Waltham's Skellig pub, where much of the film was shot. Recouping the $1 million investment isn't the goal, he says, but it wouldn't hurt. "This is either the first film of many, or the last one we do."

To keep costs down, the production leveraged connections. "On our next movie, the food will be better," Donna Bertolon says, glancing at the craft table strewn with donuts and coffee percolators. In addition to local restaurants donating food at cost, RV centers sent trailers, hotels gave bargain rates and the mayor's office expedited the process to shoot in places like the Public Garden.

"Everyone's generosity and kindness were incredible," says Meyer, who along with Poehler and assistant director Greg Smith attended BC with McLaughlin. In fact, BC itself is lending use of its high-end Avid Adrenaline equipment to edit the film this summer. "All that money we're saving goes back into the film in post-production," McLaughlin says, adding that he hopes the film will be done in time to compete on the fall film-festival circuit.

The last financial element that fell into place--and just in time--was the Massachusetts Motion Picture Tax Incentive. On Broadway is one of the first films to take advantage of this new law giving production companies tax credits for shooting in the Commonwealth. The law is intended to prevent another $90 million blockbuster like Martin Scorsese's The Departed from skipping town, but even low-budget, Boston-bred movies generate money for the local economy, says actor Sean Lawlor, who plays McIntyre's father in the film. "Everyone eats lunch at that restaurant next door."

As far as the cast goes, perhaps the biggest incentive to get involved was the opportunity to shoot on location around Boston itself. For natives like Mike O'Malley, making On Broadway was a true homecoming. "That's the bonus of doing a movie like this--you get to come back with people you have a shared history with. That's kind of what this movie is about," he says.

"My family is still in Burlington," says Poehler. "It's a great reason to come back. Boston for me means my family."

Eliza Dushku says that while back in Watertown, she spent nights in her childhood bed. Her mother is a political science prof at Suffolk University and her father, also a teacher, owns a convenience store in Southie. "After eight years in L.A., I miss... the certain sense of honesty here. [In L.A.], there's the forced smile. There's no B.S. [in Boston]. People have formed real bonds."

And Joey McIntyre reverts to the accent of his youth while reflecting on how far he's come. "Career-wise, it's nice to have a role like this and be ready for it," he says. "And to be back in Boston, in your hometown, it's so much better that it happened this way."