Just saw Fatal Attraction again for the first time in years. (Doesn’t really hold up well - nice hair, Glenn ::violently shakes head to remove image::). Featured briefly was a 1980 British Racing Green VW Scirocco, identical in every way to the one I owned. Giddyup!
Dante’s Peak featured prominently a light blue Land Cruiser, again same make, model and color of the one I used to have. Then it got swallowed up by lava, and lemme tell you, there wasn’t a dry in the house. My house. And I was the only one watching…but still.
Anybody else? Surely somebody had the maroon 928 that got sank in Ricky Business, or the 1974 Dodge Monaco (cop tires, cop door handles…), or the General Lee?
It can of course be any old epiphany you had while watching an old movie in which your old car wasn’t featured prominently: “Hey - there’s my old car for ten seconds on the street in the background! Squee!!” Let’s hear some stories.
If I ever see a movie that features a beige 1980 Oldsmobile Omega, I will purchase that movie on DVD regardless of its other merits. It was rare to see one of those in real life, much less in movies or TV shows.
Complete hijack here, but still involves seeing something you know in an old movie:
So I was living in San Francisco, in a fairly run-down, but at one point almost stately apartment building on Nob Hill. Bachelor pad, etc. I had a friend-girl (not my girlfriend, if you follow) over - she need to use my laundry facilities for some reason I can’t recall. So we are flipping channels waiting for her next load to reach the spin cycle and we come upon the movie **True Believer **- a vehicle for James Woods and Robert Downey, Jr - Woods is a grizzled hippie lawyer who is now doing the wrong thing and Downey is the spirited newbie trying remain idealistic - I think.
Anyway, towards the end of the movie, they are in New York trying to get a witness to testify and the go to visit said witness. They run up the stairs of a brownstone apartment building and get in the elevator.
But there’s something familiar about that elevator. Same folding cage with similar bend parts and rust. Same mixed-up buttons for the floors - where random, wrong-colored buttons had been replaced over the years.
I looked at my friend and we both said: Hey - they’re in MY elevator! Sure enough - we ran out to check just to make sure and there was no doubt. The scene took a while so we could clearly check a few different identifying points.
The car Clarice Starling drives in Silence of the Lambs is a dead ringer for my first beater: a 74 silver-grey Ford Pinto.
Of course, now that I go to find a cite, I learn from wikipedia that they used a '75 pinto, powder blue (although IIRC, in most of the scenes where you see it, it’s dark enough that it could pass for grey).
Driving a Pinto also caused the following conversation several times:
RandomPerson: You drive a Pinto? Hey, ever seen the movie “Top Secret”?
Me: Oh, you mean where the truck’s barreling along, screeches to a halt, taps the rear bumper of one and it explodes?
RP: Yeah!
Me: Nope, never seen it.
And (at the time) I hadn’t. I’d just had the scene described a few times, and I enjoyed messing with people.
Was watching The French Connection the other night. When the police cars were descending on the warehouse near the end where all the Mafia had gathered to stash the dope, several of their cars were '66 Impalas, just like my old one, only substantially more beaten up.
In Red Rock West, Nick Gage was driving my '73 Riviera.
I’ve found several movies that I remembered seeing some of my old cars in, and some where I didn’t remember seeing the car, but there it is. My powers of observation are unstoppable…um…nevermind
Watching The Terminator in the show with my cousins, we noted that the light blue car that The Hero or Maybe Arnold was driving and smashing up everything with was the exact same as my nearly blind-but still driving- aunts.
Jim Carrey had what looks to be my car in Eternal Sunshine- the one Clementine smashed up on the fire hydrant, and appeared at opposite ends of the block.
'nother hijack here. Not a car, but there a features even more compelling–
Before she met me, Pepper Mill saw bladerunner with a date. Near the beginning, as the camera pans over the photos on the piano, her date says “That’s my Grandmother!”
Apparently they bought a bunch of old photos somewhere, and one of this guy’s family member was thought to be photogenic enough to be included in the shot. This was not a deliberate act on his part – he was surprised to see a photo he knew showing up as one of Harrison Ford’s relatives.
My dad’s old yellow/white Chevrolet pickup appears in the background of the Dairy Queen parking lot in the movie “In Country” (which was shot in my hometown.)
He didn’t still own it when it was in the movie, though, but it’s his truck, because he had the only one in the county that was that particular color.
Peter Gibbons drives my '94 Corolla, and that guy who develops the weapon and gets blown up in the test in The Jackal drives my '83 LTD (which also gets blown up.)
I owned a 1973 Opel GT, (Bought it in 80). If I remember right, Maxwell Smart drove a Sunbeam Tiger in some episodes, but an Opel GT in others. I swear I remember Diana Riggs aka Emma Peel driving an Opel GT in the “Avengers”, but Wikipedia assures me she drove a Lotus. I still think she drove an Opel in at least one episode. So I guess that the answer is no, I have not seen on screen or TV a car that I owned, but later owned a car that I saw on TV. The GT was a fun car, but I had to ditch it when son #1 arrived, no back seat. No trunk. It was engine, driver and gas tank, in a very small affordable package. Taking care of family meant getting rid of the “Poor man’s Corvette” and getting a 80 Chevy Caprice, I have seen tons of them in movies, who hasn’t? Those are the ones parked on the street during the chase, and don’t count.
I’d just had the scene described a few times, and I enjoyed messing with people.