By Jeanette Tallant

On a quiet, tree-lined street in Paulsboro stands a pale yellow Cape Cod house — a dwelling that, like many others of little significance, has gone unnoticed for several years.

Who could have guessed that quaint home would give Paulsboro — and Gloucester County –its on-screen debut in a major motion picture?

The movie “doesn’t happen without it,” said Paulsboro’s Mayor John Burzichelli of the house on Thompson Avenue, “and we don’t have a street named ‘Kevin Smith Way.’ “

The movie he’s referring to is Kevin Smith’s “Jersey Girl,” the second film to feature the now-defunct Hollywood couple Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. “Jersey Girl” was shot in Paulsboro over a three-month period in 2002.

According to Steve Granados, director of Burzichelli’s Hill Theatre Studio in Paulsboro, art director Robert “Ratface” Holtzman knew what type of house he wanted for the film’s central set long before the shooting began. He looked all over New Jersey

and was about to move the shoot to Canada when he came across the Thompson Avenue home.

The rest, as they say, is cinematic history.

The people of Paulsboro should be proud to know that this house, along with a few other Paulsboro dwellings, are among the very first images magnified on the big screen in the final cut of “Jersey Girl,” which is due in theaters March 19.

“It was wonderful to see the whole experience and then see it on the screen,” Granados said Friday after a Philadelphia preview screening of the movie. “This was so much more dramatic.”

The film is set in small working class town called Highlands, N.J. It opens with a classroom scene shot inside the Loudenslager School, portrayed in the film as a Catholic school.

In the film, the hometown corner bar is called Clamdiggers, a name the movie crew painted on the side of the small tavern and promised to remove –until the owner decided to display it next to the original name.

“I think Clamdiggers has a new life in front of it,” Burzichelli said of Fiorile’s.

Other than the house on Thompson Avenue, the bar is the most photographed Paulsboro establishment in the movie. It’s also where the final scene takes place.

In real life, a pool table occupies the spot in Fiorile’s where Affleck and Lopez’s characters once slow danced to the music of Al Green.

After the filming wrapped, hometown regulars took back their seats at the bar where — in the movie — George Carlin and his buddies sit and sip their beer.

But the folks who frequent Fiorile’s said the Hollywood treatment of their favorite watering hole hasn’t changed a thing.

“It’s very surprising that they picked it, but it’s not surprising in the sense that it’s a very, very, nostalgic bar,” said Randy Brown, who grew up in Paulsboro. “It’s just a place where you stop, you have a drink and a sandwich and go. You’ll meet people from Paulsboro here.”

Paulsboro schools are also prominently featured in the movie –images from Loudenslager and Paulsboro High School are combined to make the Catholic elementary school attended by Affleck’s movie daughter, who is played by young Raquel Castro.

Inside Paulsboro High School, the bold red seats and thick red curtain of the school auditorium — where Affleck, Castro, Carlin and Liv Tyler grace the stage for a family talent show — also made the final cut, as did Borough Hall.

In one scene with Affleck pitted against his Highlands neighbors, he stands at the front of a room in Borough Hall and addresses an angry crowd –some of whom are Paulsboro residents. While Affleck speaks, serious-looking men sit behind him listening intently. Many Gloucester County viewers will recognize these non-speaking characters from their real-life roles as Paulsboro officials –Mayor Burzichelli; several Paulsboro councilmen; and Gloucester County Democratic Party Chairman Michael Angelini, the municipal solicitor in Paulsboro.

So, how’s the flick?

“It’s fun,” Burzichelli said. “I think people are going to enjoy what they see, and they’re going to have a lot of fun picking out people they know.”

Municipal Administrator John Salvatore helped Smith and his crew scout locations for various scenes, including the bar and the schools. He probably has the best eye for what didn’t make the movie.

Scenes shot at the Paulsboro lighthouse were left on the cutting room floor, he said. So was a wedding scene showing Affleck and Lopez on the steps of St. John’s Church, which might have become the only time America would see them together in wedding attire.

In the end, as the screen fades to black and the credits roll, Paulsboro and its residents get their due in a big thank you to the mayor, the borough, and the people of Paulsboro.

Burzichelli said he hopes to hold a Paulsboro screening of “Jersey Girl” sometime in March, giving the many residents who stood on the sidelines and watched, and those who were lucky enough to get roles as extras, a chance to see –in their hometown –the movie that was made in their hometown.

The reviews are in. Paulsboro is very much in the much-awaited Kevin Smith-directed movie, “Jersey Girl,” which was partially filmed in the borough.

A totally unbiased preview audience (it included Mayor John Burzichelli and borough Administrator John Salvatore) was totally “thumbs up” concerning the way Paulsboro looks in the Ben Affleck-Jennifer Lopez picture, and how much screen time the borough gets.

That would be considerably more screen than one scene that remains entirely on the cutting-room floor, our preview spies report. A wedding scene involving the two co-stars, who are no longer star-crossed lovers in real life, was not in the version of “Jersey Girl” screened last week. Wonder whose idea that was?

Sorry. We forgot for a moment that this is the editorial page, not the celebrity gossip page. But the latest dish is that even though snipping out the wedding scene nixed some views of the steps of St. John’s Church, there are still plenty of local landmarks that audiences can see. Included are the Loudenslager School, and some of its inhabitants, and Fiorile’s Bar, known in the movie, and perhaps hereafter, as “Clamdiggers.”

A Clamdiggers’ sign from the 2002 filming remains on the tavern, which is perhaps poised to take full advantage of the kind of publicity that turned a once-obscure Boston pub called the Bull&Finch into “Cheers.”

It would be great if Paulsboro and its citizens can find other ways to capitalize on the March 19 wide release of “Jersey Girl,” even though, in the movie, the borough is a stand-in for a Central Jersey shore town.

The box-office success of “Jersey Girl” is not assured, but the sneak peeks show us Paulsboro is on screen more than long enough for the borough and its residents to have a boffo opportunity to shine.

As the guy who will host the Academy Awards next Sunday used to say:

“You look mahh-velous.”