Famous - and not so - Scenic Landmarks In Movies.

Cafe Society
1

Do any of you Doper’s watch a movie and think to yourself, “This whole movie could have evolved simply around getting that shot!”. Or that the actual location was equally as important as the plot? For an example, I am wondering if the film, The Ninth Configuration, would have worked quite as well if it had not been based inside that wonderful castle.

What I’m trying to get at is, I’m sure there are film makers who see a particular landscape, building, location, etc, and decide they have to include it in a movie, and I was hoping you might might be able to remind my addled brain of some further examples? :slight_smile:

2

Most obvious – John Ford and Monument Valley, which he managed to work into about half his westerns.

3

The Devil’s Tower monolith in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, perhaps.

4

A particularly bad example would be the way the Golden Gate Bridge was used in X3. The film would have been marginally better if they had put the lab someplace else.

How about North By Northwest, and a certain monument?

5

You’d think so , yes, but not by the requirements of the OP. The making-of documentary makes it clear that location scouts brought the Devil’s Tower to Spielberg’s attention. There were various ideas for the climax before that location was found, IIRC.

6

Independence Day, of course.

7

I guess I could broaden my OP’s scope, by including monuments or landmarks that are perhaps even superfluous to the plot, and thrown in simply because it looked good.

8

Sleepless in Seattle starred Tom Hanks, Meg Ryan, and The Empire State Building. The movie made deliberate and explicit reference to An Affair to Remember, which was a remake of Love Affair. But the bulding’s most iconic screen appearance would be in the climactic scene of the original King Kong.

Early in the movie Hancock, the hero impales an automobile on the Capitol Records Building spike (meant to resemble a phonograph needle). Although the scene as a whole isn’t quite essential to the story, it wouldn’t have worked with just any old building.

9

Well, then Devil’s Tower is certainly back in the mix. :slight_smile:

And, I suppose, a few dozen mentions for Vasquez Rocks.

10

This mansion from the film The Haunting, was begging to be used in a movie.

11

How to write a James bond movie

  1. pick an exotic location. (Lets do it in Venice this time)

  2. invent an action sequence that uses that location (How about a chase in a Gondola. And the Gondola changes into a motor boat. And then becomes a hovercraft, and goes up into St Mark’s Square.

  3. Fit the plot around the action sequence.

Every Bond movie does it to a greater or lesser extent.

12

Yup, and The Italian Job was just a videod holiday brochure for Italy, with a bit of robbery and Mini Coopers thrown in. :slight_smile: