Skyfall has a bunch of locations I’ve been to or near. The “elevator” scene in Shanghai? I’ve spent plenty of time in that neighborhood in Pudong. London? Well, the whole city is a 007 crime scene. That grass hut bar on a beach? Your guess is as good as mine, but it sure looks like a place I visited in Guam once…
Keeping with the Toronto theme suggested by hogarth, if you recall Silver Streak, and the scene where Gene Wilder applies shoe polish to his face in the washroom; well, I’ve taken more than a few leaks in that washroom.
In fact, all three “big city” train stations shown in the movie–Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Chicago–were one station, that being Toronto’s Union Station. I know it well, having taken many train trips into and out of that station, when I lived in Toronto.
It was immediately obvious to me that Drop Dead Fred was filmed in Minneapolis and St Paul. The scene where Phoebe Cates is in front of what I’m pretty sure is the Federal Reserve Building suddenly transported me from a small town in Czechoslovakia back to the Nicollet Mall.
The scene in Firefox where Clint Eastwood makes a getaway in what’s supposed to be the Moscow metro was clearly shot in Helsinki, which at that time had only one subway line (when I was there in 1990, my Finnish classmate who was showing me around called it the city’s biggest joke). The old part of town has actually substituted for Moscow in a lot of movies.
Any movie filmed on location in Moscow or St Petersburg will show lots of places I’ve been and recognize immediately. Sometimes the geographical discontinuities are jarring; in the opening scenes of The Saint, people ran from the Hotel Ukraina to Red Square (separated by ~2 1/2 miles) in less than ten seconds.
I was once watching a movie filmed on location in Venice (don’t remember the title) where a woman was walking along the waterfront near the Bridge of Sighs, snapping photos. Every time they showed what she was supposedly looking at through her viewfinder, the picture was nothing like what you would actually see if you were there.
I was watching the episode of CSI: NY where they found the body in the underground habitat at the site of the 1964–65 World’s Fair when they showed the plaza leading up to the Unisphere. I pointed at the screen and told my daughter I stood on exactly on that spot when I was nine years old!
About 5 years ago, my mom and I took a cruise around the British Isles, including a stop in the Shetland Islands. A couple of years back, I found the series *Shetland *on Netflix and saw several of the places we passed/visited in Lerwick.
Homicide: Life on the Street used the exterior of the old Recreation Pier on Thames street in Fells Point as the headquarters. I used to play there as a child and my sister tended bar across the street from there for 30+ years.
The opening scene of The Social Network was shot in a pub called “The Thirsty Scholar” which is right around the corner from where I live. We eat there from time to time and we’ve occasionally sat at that table.
And there’s a sign pointing out the table at Katz’s Deli where they filmed the “I’ll have what she’s having” scene in When Harry Met Sally but I think that falls in the too obvious category now.
I saw Billy Jack in the 80s and realized part of it was filmed at Bandelier National Monument, which I had visited in the late 70s.
I have been on Skellig Michael, the tiny island off the coast of Ireland where Luke Skywalker lived in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi.
I lived in Upper Darby at the time they were filming Silver Linings playbook - we go to a farmers market across the street from the movie theater, and our first daycare was across the street from the Llanerch diner.
It was odd seeing the actors jogging in the film, and watching them teleport from Upper Darby to the neighboring town (Havertown) over and over.
Black Rain. A lot of the Japan filming locations were in Osaka and Kobe. I’ve been to them all. The final fight scene (motorbike chase in the countryside) takes place at, what looks to be, a winery of all things. If it was a winery and in Japan I might have been there too.
Shortly after I moved to Hoboken, NJ, I was walking past a park that looked vaguely familiar. I stood there for a while, until it came to me, that a scene from “On the Waterfront” was shot there. It is where Karl Malden is talking to Eva Marie Saint, as they look toward the shipyard.
My company was located in northern New Jersey, and we had a summer picnic in the same park where “Big” shot the carnival scene with the Zoltar machine. The scenes with Tom Hanks bicycling back to the carnival the next day were also shot in the area. The place is Palisades Park near the George Washington Bridge, with the specific park with the carnival is Ross Dock Picnic area.
Living for a while in the New York City area, there are tons of other locations that are used in TV and movies.
The Gene Hackman movie Hoosiers was filmed largely in Indiana. In particular, the championship game was filmed in Hinkle Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler University. I worked at Butler for five years, and passed by the Fieldhouse every day.
Much less famous, there is an ultra-cheapo action movie called Terror Squad, starring Chuck Connors, that was filmed in my hometown of Kokomo, Indiana. It is filled with locations that I knew well, including my old high school and the public library. My former boss had a short appearance as an extra, playing an old man who gets run over by terrorists during a car chase.
Yeah I guess if you’re from NYC (or LA?) you’ve been to all the movie locations.
Twice a day, five days a week, I drive by the Kent farm from the recent DC Superman films. In reality, it’s a farm field in the outer Chicago suburbs with some barns but they threw up the Kent residence exterior to shoot the scenes. It actually went up and down twice since they didn’t keep it between films – you’d think it’d be easier to leave it but since it’s not a real house, maybe it doesn’t weather well. Never saw any film action going on; the the days they’d be filming there was a ton of police posted to keep the lookie-loos away. Not that I would have stopped my commute to catch a glimpse of someone anyway.
I’ve been to the island of Kauai twice; several movies have been filmed there but most notably are the massive waterfall from the beginning of Jurassic Park and the opening scenes from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Also of note : in the opening scenes of the Blues Brothers, when they jump the car over the raised bridge - that was right next to Dundee Cement Co where my Father worked. He watched them film that scene and got to meet the stuntmen who actually did the jump.
Judging by the wear on the stairs, I’m certain A LOT of people have walked down the Untouchables stairs at Chicago’s Union Station. It was still cool to walk down them.
One of the few films I’ve ever seen that actually filmed inside an actual DC Metro station, and not some other city’s subway passed off as DC’s Metro.
In the upcoming Wonder Woman sequel they filmed some scenes in Georgetown, and because it takes place in the 80s, they recreated a few notable 80s Georgetown establishments, such as Commander Salamander, even though it wasn’t in the exact location of the now-long-gone store (and the sign wasn’t 100% accurate, but whatever).
The scene in ‘Kickass’ where he is filmed fighting in a coffee shop parking lot was just up the street from where I live. Dip 'N Sip donuts (Kingston and Main) was torn down several years ago and is now condos.
There were also some good views of downtown in 'Shoot ‘Em Up’.
Also, just about everything in ‘Scott Pilgrim vs the World’, and many of the shots in ‘Shazam’…
Several locations along Route 66 in northern Arizona, used in Easy Rider. The gas station and motel scenes in particular.
I’ve been to the Old Post Office in Washington, used for part of a chase scene in the Kevin Costner film No Way Out. Likewise the Federal Triangle location which appears in the In the Line of Fire scene where Clint Eastwood, playing an aging Secret Service agent, becomes exhausted running alongside the presidential limo. And of course the White House and U.S. Capitol, where I’ve often been, have been in lots o’ movies.
The Tennessee holding facility from which Dr. Hannibal Lecter escapes after clubbing two guards in The Silence of the Lambs is actually the Allegheny County Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Pittsburgh; I’ve been there several times. The climactic fight scene between Batman and Bane in The Dark Knight Rises is on the steps of the Carnegie Institute, not far away. The campus of my prep school near Pittsburgh was used for scenes from a Valerie Bertinelli TV movie, the name of which escapes me.
In Cleveland, the Old County Courthouse which appears in the Kevin Bacon movie Telling Lies in America is just down the street from where an action scene from Alex Cross was filmed, and a chase scene from The Fate of the Furious was also filmed just a stone’s throw from there (I saw the cars zipping up and down the closed street several times one day). Street scenes from Spider-Man 3 and Captain America: The Winter Soldier were also filmed within easy walking distance of there. Another Costner movie, Draft Day, was filmed in Cleveland, and I recognized a half-dozen locations from that. At one point he drives a nonsensical route across town; part of it is a stretch of road near my house that I’ve been on a million times.
I know the U.S. Naval Academy professor whose office doubled for Harrison Ford’s in Patriot Games, but haven’t been in it myself.
And I was happily in a key filming location for The Avengers in Cleveland: I was an Avengers extra - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board
According to Wikipedia, the winery is not in Japan:
In summer '94 I was in Scotland on a family vacation when we drove up a valley and ended up in the middle of a fake stone village that had been set up for the filming of Braveheart; it was the village where Murron was attacked by a rapacious English soldier.