Rosalyn, WA got a big uptick from Northern Exposure. Not sure what kind of tourism Piraeus, Greece did before Never On Sunday, but it had to pick up some afterwards. I’ve wanted to visit Brainerd, MN since I saw Fargo, but it’s just too far from anyplace I’d have a legitimate reason to pass through Brainerd on the way to, if that makes any sense.
This has to cut the other way, too. I’m guessing Clayton, GA (Deliverance), Burkittsville, MD (The Blair Witch Project) and Fairplay, CO (South Park) must seem like Cursed Earth at this point. Baltimore actually enables its horrifying depiction in John Waters movies and David Simon TV shows. This can’t help property values, though it does bring more film and TV work than the city would receive otherwise.
Similarly, there’s Bronson Canyon in Griffith Park. I don’t know if it’s “famous,” exactly, although if you’re a film buff it’s fun to watch for it to show up in movie after movie.
Punxsutawney PA had been doing the Groundhog Day thing for nearly a century before the Bill Murray movie was produced. The “crowd” for G-Day in pre-movie times seldom amounted to more than the members of the Groundhog Club and some area news people. After the movie, thousands started attending, though numbers are dropping lately compared to the peak years.
Plus there is now the annual celebration in Woodstock, Illinois where the movie was filmed. Woodstock draws a smattering of tourists year-round to see such sites as the B&B, the town square, and the piano teacher’s house. Woodstock indeed owes its notoriety almost entirely to the movie. I live 50 miles away and the only reason I remember the town from before the movie is that I thought it was funny that it had the same name as the rock concert in New York.
True. Filmmakers inexplicably have a deep affection for interesting-looking locations within a day’s drive of the studio. Especially if it’s free or cheap to film there.
I’ve never seen any of the Twilight movies. (Based solely on hearing about them, the sound like vampire movies for people who don’t like vampires.) But I’ve heard Forks, WA is popular among their fans.
There’s this place at the southeastern tip of New York, kind of a big canyon lined with buildings and big tall flashing billboards at each end. It’s in a zillion movies and I’d say it’s a real place because it’s always shown jammed with people, too many to be paid extras, but then Tom Cruise did a movie where it was shown empty and that gave away that it was just another set. Probably CGI.
That Groundhog Club annoys me. The predictive value of the groundhog is when he come out of his den, not when some guy in a top hat pulls him out of a box!
Blair Witch Project was set in Burkittsville, but not filmed there, but that doesn’t stop the goofs from stealing stuff from there, among other things.
Not in any film I know of but in countless auto ads on TV: looking up the Coast Highway, ocean on the left, steep hills on the right and ahead is a huge rock with a gap to the right of it through which the highway passes.
This is just north of the Los Angeles County/Ventura County line where the highway zigs inland to pass Point Mugu Naval Air Station and Port Hueneme. You have seen this location many times, and considering how cinegenic it is and how close to LA it is I am sure it has appeared in films.
If the big rock has a name I don’t know what it is. LA area Dopers, any ideas?
The motel from An Officer and a Gentleman became a romantic tourist attraction that never fails to disappoint couples who hadn’t considered that military people are generally young, horny and poor and will fuck in real dumps.