I arrived home this morning after a two day business trip to London. and upon alighting at Kings Cross/ St Pancras I cannot help being transported into a Potter fantasy. I allways make a point of wandering along platform 8 at Kings Cross, wandering through the arch towards platforms 9-11 and smiling to myself every time I see the sign that the good people at kings cross put up saying Platform 9 3/4. (IT’s the little things in life I know!)
Also I was mentally transported to a strange mixture of Jeeves & Worcester and Sherlock Holmes last night. I was lucky enough to go to a do at a very posh gentlemens club on Pall Mall. I could write hazilly about the evening for far too long so I won’t bore you.
What I would like to know is where else could I or have you been mentally transported into your favorate film/book/TV
The best moment I can remember was passing a building in San Francisco that looked strangely familiar, and realizing that it was the apartment house where Kim Novak’s character supposedly lived in Vertigo. Of course there are obvious landmarks all over that movie, but this one was a surprise.
I also live in the Point Loma area of San Diego, so it’s fun to catch a glimpse of the point off on the horizon in Some Like it Hot, when they are supposed to be somewhere in Florida, but are actually at the Hotel del Coronado.
Toronto’s Union Station. It stood in for the LA, Kansas City, and Chicago train stations in the film Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.
I’ve had to use Union Station many times, for taking regular intercity trains, commuter trains, and subway trains; and I always remember that movie when I pass through that grand old station. I’ve used the men’s room where Pryor disguised Wilder–although they really shot the scene in the men’s room, they also shot them exiting from what is in actual fact, the women’s restroom. And I’ve wondered what it would be like to drive a sportscar through the big hall, like Richard Pryor did, whenever I walk through there.
No, it’s not my favourite all-time movie. But I can’t help but remember it when I’m in Union Station in Toronto.
When I first moved to New York, I lived on the Upper West Side, a target-rich environment for movie scenes.
And later, when my wife and I moved to the suburbs, I took the train into Grand Central Station and had to walk by St. Patrick’s Cathedral and Sak’s and through Rockefeller Center to get to the office of my former employer.
I couldn’t begin to count the number of spots I saw in my everyday life that I recognized from movie scenes.
My wife has a favorite, though: when I was a law student, before we moved here permanently, I spent a summer working in the city. I lived at the NYU dorms during that summer. My wife came up to visit a few times, and she swears that out the window was the apartment that served as the exterior of Harry’s apartment in When Harry Met Sally…, pretty much her favorite movie.
I want to know if there’s ever going to be a plaque on St Pancras station, explaining that it stood in for the exterior of Kings Cross in the H**** P***** films…(ooh dear, the board censored me )
Every time we venture up to Sydney, my friends and I alre always sure to go and have a little ‘mental transport’ under the bridge where they shot scenes from the first ‘Matrix’ film. It’s not my favourite film - but it’s cool nonetheless.