After walking out of his New York City residence on Tuesday, Jason Rabinowitz ended up in the nation’s capital.

Or, at least that’s what the creators of an upcoming movie wanted him to believe.

Rabinowitz, an airline and transit writer who lives in Brooklyn Heights, stumbled upon the set of a Steven Spielberg movie titled “The Papers” that will star Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katherine Graham.

The film is set in 1971, when the paper challenged the federal government for rights to publish the Pentagon Papers, a series of leaked documents about the U.S.’s role in the Vietnam War.

(The film has been promoted as “The Papers,” but casting calls and paperwork have listed it as “Nor’easter.”)

For this particular scene, Rabinowitz saw crews setting up to transform the New York block into D.C.’s 14th Street NW, complete with a green D.C. street sign. Vintage sedans lined the curb for the historical piece.

Rabinowitz was en route to the subway when he saw what was happening and stuck around for a few minutes to take photos. “It made for a fun commute,” he told DCist.

A week earlier, Rabinowitz said the team was shooting for the D.C. movie by his office in Manhattan.

“I’m not a huge fan of productions shooting in the wrong city, but obviously I understand why they do it,” he says. (Collecting millions of dollars in tax credits, Netflix’s political drama House of Cards is primarily filmed in Maryland, but crews sometimes pop up in the District).

Still, Rabinowitz said it always “irks” him to see a movie or TV show based in New York City that’s “obviously shot somewhere else.”

“I can imagine D.C. residents have the same opinion for their city,” he continued.

If he sees the movie, Rabinowitz will be looking to see if Brooklyn’s Clark Street 2/3 subway station will be changed to a D.C. Metro station in post production.

Additional filming is set to take place in D.C. later this week, according to WTOP. Spielberg, Hanks, and Streep visited The Washington Post in May for research purposes.

We’ve updated this article to reflect the film’s working titles.

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