# Misrepresented cities in TV/movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 19, 2010, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047 "2010-03-19T18:58:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [March 26, 2010, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047/101 "2010-03-26T14:45:36Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Many of the planets they visited on the original Star Trek look a lot like Southern Calif. You’re an alien? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047/102 "2010-03-28T02:45:07Z")
[Happy, Texas](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0162360/) (1999). I am more familiar with the real Happy than I want to be. A flat, dusty, dirty little piece of Hell on Earth, it makes the town in _The Last Picture Show_ look like Paris, France. And yet the Happy in this movie looked like a quaint little all-American burg. One scene was without a doubt shot down close to the Mexican border in the Big Bend Country, a pretty area with hills and valleys, and that’s what two of the characters gaze at while sitting on a back porch in Happy, which is in reality up in the Panhandle and flat and brown as a pancake. And there t’ain’t no secret gay cowboy bars in the area neither. I’d be willing to venture a hefty bet on that. ---
**Author:** ![Neptunian\_Slug](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ce7236/32.png) [@Neptunian\_Slug](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neptunian_Slug)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047/103 "2010-03-28T04:21:03Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I’ve never been to Lima, Ohio, but I can wager a guess that they don’t build high schools with a bunch of open corridors in snow country. You would be surprised. My high school in Ohio was set in separate buildings. There were some covered walkways. But in the rain those walkways looked like a Tokyo subway train. Easier just to get wet and get to class. And it was damn cold to boot in the winter. But along the lines of the OP, I think Budapest has been used pretty regularly as a filming location. I guess it works as a generic European city. I have watched a few cold war films that were supposed to be set in Russia or East Berlin and recognized places in Budapest. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2010, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047/104 "2010-03-28T06:28:05Z")
> [@Quercus\_alba](#): > > Must have been the same southern Minnesota mountain range that appears in the background in Little House on the Prairie… Walnut Grove was unlucky in many ways (blindness, fires, tornadoes, the James gang and later [or earlier] the Younger gang, rapist clowns, land grabbers and dynamite and the like) but they were amazingly blessed when it came to weather. They found the only section of Minnesota where not only does it only snow twice a decade but it’s rarely even cold. ---
**Author:** ![becbec](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@becbec](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/becbec)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047/105 "2010-04-05T12:23:40Z")
The ending of “Point Break” is supposedly Bells Beach (Victoria, Australia) but there are pine trees and characters with REALLY bad fake Australian accents (worse than the real thing!) It definitely isn’t Bells Beach! Always makes me laugh. ---
**Author:** ![Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/troy_mcclure_sf/32/4150_2.png) [@Troy\_McClure\_SF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Troy_McClure_SF)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047/106 "2010-04-05T16:10:01Z")
> [@Ají de Gallina](#): > > I this has been covered before, but NY has an amazing ammount of T intersections. Ha! Maybe _Law & Order_ staked out all the four-way intersections. > [@Kyla](#): > > I wondered for a moment if the people who made this show have ever even been to San Francisco, and changed the channel. Take a gander at _Trauma_ (while you still can). It’s not great, but they film in SF, and quite beautifully. It’s [not perfect](http://www.flickr.com/photos/troymccluresf/3862893249/) but it’s enjoyable if you know the City. > [@Wheelz](#): > > The far inferior sequel _Blues Brothers 2000_ used Toronto as faux-Chicago. I suppose it wasn’t horribly misrepresentative - no shots of the CN Tower or a Cubs game at the SkyDome or anything like that - but it was all just terribly generic-looking. Just one of the many reasons that film was such a disappointment. Gah! I didn’t know that. Yet another thing to add to the list of Reasons I Refuse To Watch BB2000. (Also, it always bugged me in the original when Jake says “that’s Wrigley Field” when Elwood tells him his fake address. They should have saved that punchline for when the Nazis actually show up there.) > [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Many of the planets they visited on the original Star Trek look a lot like Southern Calif. When Mal, Zoe, and Jayne meet up with Patience in the pilot of _Firefly_, my friend said “I grew up there.” _Supernatural_ films a lot in Vancouver. At one point, they had an ep set in Hollywood and one of the characters said under a gray, cold sky “this might be Hollywood, but this weather is positively Canadian!” There was another ep set in a suburb of Chicago (looking through a wiki, I think it was Joliet). They walk out of a random suburban house onto a random suburban street, and we see in the background a HUGE image of the Sears Tower, as if they were standing next to Buckingham Fountain. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Krebbs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5fc32e/32.png) [@Mr.Krebbs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Krebbs)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2010, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047/107 "2010-04-05T16:19:04Z")
Most of _Groundhog Day_ was filmed in my hometown: Woodstock, IL. The movie is set in Punxsutawney, PA. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/misrepresented-cities-in-tv-movies/533047.md?page=5)