'The Firm' Cruises Into Harvard Square

Hollywood hit Harvard for the second time this semester, as heartthrob actor Tom Cruise shot the first scenes of his new movie on Saturday morning outside Harvard Yard.

About 100 people jammed the Yard's south Mass. Ave. gates from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. to watch Cruise run into the street, as he filmed the first minutes of "The Firm."

The Sydney Pollack picture is based on John Grisham's best-selling novel of the same name.

After the session, a mass of screaming students, spectators and passers-by pressed Cruise for autographs, pictures and handshakes.

"It's beautiful here," Cruise said after the filming. "I wish-I'd had a little more time to tour around here."

Earlier this month, Joe Pesci visited Harvard to shoot segments of his upcoming film, "With Honor."

Tom Cruise as Law School Grad

Cruise plays a Harvard Law School graduate who spurns many prestigious job offers to accept a position with a small Memphis law firm.

While Cruise was playing the part of a law school graduate, two bonafide Harvard law students worked as production assistants for the movie.

Jon Ballis and David Sadkin, both second-year law students, assisted in the Cambridge shoot on Saturday and the filming at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston last week.

"It made me realize how unglamorous the whole movie business is," Ballis said. "Outside the stars, people have to put up with a lot of crap."

But for two days, "it was definitely fun," Ballis said.

After the short Harvard scene, Cruise's character rushes off to interview with one of the firms in Copley Plaza Hotel where the rest of the scene was filmed, Sadkin said.

While Sadkin said the story of "The Firm" is "great fiction," he said the recruitment process depicted by the movie is realistic.

"I think that coming out of Harvard Law School, you have a lot of opportunities," said Sadkin. "Especially because in the book [Cruise's character] is third in his class."

The Firm was filmed in Memphis, the Gran Cayman Islands, Washington, D.C., Cambridge and Boston.

The film will be released later this year, according to publicist Lauren Strogoff.