If you’ve walked past the corner of Belgrade and Marlborough streets this week you probably saw a movie is currently in production. Yeah, the most recent Rocky film and the majority of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies were filmed throughout Philly and some of the Riverwards, but it’s still weird to turn a corner and see a shopping cart with mannequin legs sticking out and tons of pro film gear on the sidewalk.

The film, titled Zeros, is director Charles Smith’s first feature length endeavor. He told The Spirit yesterday that he has been producing movies for the last nine years and he is excited to capture Fishtown from a director’s perspective.

He explained the independent comedy as, “…A superhero comedy about what it would be like if two knucklehead guys try to become superheros. You have movies like Kickass and the characters do something extraordinary. But when these guys go out they cause a significant amount of problems because they don’t actually have any powers.”

Another crew member on the set told us, “Think Kickass meets Pineapple Express.” Cool.

I was invited inside during a lighting change and scene rehearsal. What I saw were two actors decked out as Fishtown hipsters portraying believable losers and I loved it. I watched the same scene three times and I laughed harder each time.

I asked Smith why he chose Fishtown, he said, “Because I live in Fishtown, I was excited to shoot around here. I wanted to shoot in this area very much. It’s where all of our ideas came from. Also, if you look around, it’s one of the last sections that is experiencing gentrification.”

Gentrification? Wait, I thought this was a comedy. He explained further,

‘What we thought was funny was there’s this whole thing about white male privilege going on. So, we’ve got these two guys in an area that is being gentrified and we felt like they were causing havoc,” Smith said. “But, they’re just blasting through the city like they’re a bunch of college kids. They’re in their 30s, but it’s like they never left and they are still causing havoc to their local community, because we see it, that’s what living here does.”

The film will be released in about 18 months. Smith will then hit the festival circuit. In the meantime, you can check out some other movies he’s worked on like Lebanon, Pa. (2010), Neighbor (2009) and All Along (2007).