In the movie “The Falcon Takes Over”, the wanna be reporter announces she is from Morgan, MN. I grew up there (and mom still lives there) - it is a small farming community southwest of Minneapolis/St Paul. A cousin caught the line when it was broadcast on TCM and posted it on Facebook.
Could have been a random dart throw at a US map, but one of the writers is Lynn Root, listed as from Minnesota - and there was a Root family in Morgan - so it is possible (maybe even likely) that he threw in a hometown reference.
my other hometown was figured prominently in an late 80s movie called “terror squad” it was supposed ot be what happened when the breakfast club met middle eastren terrorist who was trying to hide from authorities
Two major movies were filmed in my hometown of Johnstown, PA. Slap Shot starring Paul Newman, and All the Right Moves starring Tom Cruise and Craig T. Nelson.
I remember when the movie “Big Tex” came out. The only reason my friends and I went to see it is because it was shot in Tulsa. They even shot some scenes in the mall I used to hang out in.
The Matt Damon movie Promised Land was filmed around our town. Our friend’s farm market was converted to Guns, Gas, & Guitars. The film crew actually blew dirt onto the walls to make things look . . . dirty. Frances McDormand was very nice to everyone.
I think everyone in Madison, WI, went to go see Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School since it was filmed at the University. It was much better than I thought it would be.
The TV series Hung, about a male prostitute, had the main character living in a run-down house on a lake. My dad lived on that lake at the time, about 15 houses away. The producers rented the house, mostly for exterior scenes, and made it look more run-down than it was. Some scenes required a big hole in the roof, so they made a hole, with the permission of the real homeowner. After the scenes were shot, the producers replaced the whole roof.
For Promised Land, our friends’ farm market was “remodeled” to make it look dirty, crappy, falling apart. After they finished filming, they laid a new floor, painted, etc.
I’ve complained about this before on the SDMB, but let me do it again. The television program Glee was set in Lima, Ohio. Nothing about the show resembles anything in Lima (which was about 25 miles from where I grew up). The show appears to be written by people who were never outside of southern California in their life.
Last year’s TV show Emergence was set in my home town of Southold, NY. It was clear they had no clue about what it was like. Other than one day of background shots and the look of the police cars, they never got anything right.
The Place Beyond the Plains, on the other hand, was set and shot here in Schenectady. The best part of watching the movie for me was identifying the locations.
In The Hunter, Steve McQueen captures LeVar Burton in Herscher, Illinois. All of my siblings went to Herscher High School at some point and Dad took me to a barber there after the barber in our town permanently closed. The film crew for The Hunter also spent some time on our town’s main street but I decided to stay away from them, figuring that they didn’t need a 9-year-old boy getting in the way.
The high school where I spent my Junior & Senior years stood in for the high school in the 21 Jump Street movie.
It is a beautiful campus, especially in the fall, when they shot it. But they hadn’t planned for reshoots, which happened right after all those brilliant red and orange leaves had fallen. So suddenly there’s a movie crew spending days wiring colorful fabric leaves to all the trees in a two-block area.
There was a movie filmed five years ago. It might come out next year. Maybe. They did some filming in the area where my husband’s from, but I’m not sure what will show up in the movie, or if it will even mention the area.
Had no idea it could take so long between the time a film is shot and it makes it to the studio.
Grumpy Old Men was filmed near where I am now in Wabesha, MN
There are a few things filmed in La Crosse, WI. Filming Location Matching "La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA" (Sorted by Popularity Ascending) - IMDb
Interesting that Fort McCoy was not filmed in Fort McCoy (not sure how hard that would have been. There are publicly accessible parts of the place (including a campground). I’ve seen a few movies at the Hollywood Theater (its been closed for years)
Not strictly on topic, but since we’re on a Wisconsin kick… (this happened in Milwaukee):
In the movie AIRPORT (the not-purposely-a-parody one, back in the 70s), one of the opening scenes focuses on a nervous man at a ticket counter… “I wanna go to Milwaukee!”
Someone in our audience (ok, it was teenage me) quipped “He WANTS to go to Milwaukee? Clearly insane!”
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(Turned out he had a bomb in his luggage, so I was right.)
Not my hometown, but the Mel Gibson-Robert Downey Jr. film Air America was filmed in the northern-Thai provincial capital of Mae Hong Son in 1989 while I was living there as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Thailand’s smallest provincial capital, it had a population of only 5000 at the time. Hollywood moved in and took the place over for about six weeks, throwing all sorts of crazy money around. The locals were more than happy to have them there. Never mind that, being on the Myanmar border, all the temples there are Myanmar style, it was portrayed as a town in Laos.
I “met” Mel Gibson without knowing whom I was speaking with. A now-defunct restaurant near the house I rented was called the Good Luck. The young couple who owned and operated it were friends of mine, and it was my usual night-time spot. Floor seating on pillows, no chairs. In addition to Thai food, Lak, the wife, had amassed a large repertory of Middle Eastern recipes thanks to the steady stream of Israeli backpackers passing through that area, and she made a killer moussaka. I was in there one evening when six guys came in, obviously movie people, but I ignored them since I had just come from the post office with a bunch of mail from home. That was occupying my attention. One guy leaned over and asked me what was good. I told him the moussaka. I finished my mail and dinner and went home. The next morning, as I was heading out into the province, I stopped by the Good Luck to pick up some food to take with me like I often did, and Lak was all excited. “I can’t believe Mel Gibson was in my restaurant last night!’ she told me. “Mel Gibson was here? Oh, that’s great,” I replied. Lak looked at me all funny and said, “Well, yeah, you were talking to him.” “I was talking to Mel Gibson?” " Yeah, you told him the moussaka was good.” I thought about it, and yeah, I guess that was Mel Gibson.