Sometime back there was a thread about movies filmed in your state. Jacksonville FL used to be the "Hollywood Before Hollywood. Weather was better than NY area and it was cheaper to film here. Some of the early comedy classics were filmed in Jacksonville. Unfortunately the locals decided that the film community was nothing but a bunch of immoral pleasure-seekers, ie: a bad influence on community morals so the city govt made it very difficult for film companies to do business here. So the film industry said fuck it and moved to California and created Hollywood.
I was looking for some information on the Jacksonville website and found their film promotion unit which listed the following cinema and tv productions recently film in and around Jacksonville. I thought I would share this list with you.
Movies/Features
G.I. Jane
Devil’s Advocate
The New Adventures of Pippy Longstocking
Police Academy
Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
Illegally Yours
Gold Coast
Ride
Moody Beach
Brenda Starr
A Cross in Time
Kyoko
Television Productions:
Intimate Strangers
Dalton: Code of Vengeance
The Story of Tony Cimo
Supercarrier
Road Raiders
Prize Pulitzer
Orpheus Descending
The Trade Off
Family Reunion
Summertime Switch
Pointman (22 episodes)
Saved By the Light
Cold Case
Summer of Fear
All She Ever Wanted
The Babysitter’s Seduction
Sudden Terror
First-Time Felon
According to the Massachusetts Film Office, something called ‘Geezers’ was shot in Worcester back in 1999. I never heard of it and IMDb doesn’t have anything on it.
I live in San Francisco. If I started the list right now, I’d be finished sometime around November.
But a few years ago when I was living in Portland ME, Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston were in town filming some scenes for The Preacher’s Wife. Apparantly the frozen pond at Deering Oaks Park is sufficiently scenic to attract Hollywood.
The funny thing was, we had just come off a long warm stretch that late-winter/early-spring and most of the snow had melted down to dirty piles of ice. They had to come up with fake snow to make it look like they wanted it to.
In my hometown they filmed a small, independant picture named “Riding With James Dean.” Our town apparently had the 1950’s charm that the producers were looking for. It was the first time that “Hollywood” had ever graced our little burg, and the town went nuts. Everybody and their uncle went down to where they were filming and pestered the director for bit parts for themselves, their daughter, their dog, their car . . . The director was a nice guy, I heard, so he let a few of them in, and used some local people’s 1950-style cars and trucks, but he was overwhelmed by the, um, enthusiasm of the locals. It was a huge headache for him, I’m sure. Local yokels would jump in front of the camera, waving and grinning. “Hi, Maw, I’m in a movie!” Eventually, he packed up camp, and moved the entire production back to California, where the residents are a bit more blase about movie-making. The whole experiance was so bad, that he never even returned to screen the movie in our town like he said he would. Not that I blame him.
In my hometown, Mansfield, Ohio, the most famous movie filmed there was The Shawshank Redemption. There’s a really old prison there which was used for the movie. There’s some other movies filmed at that prison as well, but nothing really notable.
Where I live now: Ulee’s Gold was filmed about 17 miles from where I take vacations in North Florida. It was based on an actual bee-keeping family who really do sell some of the world’s best honey. I highly recommend it!
Where I used to live: South Florida has had lots of movies filmed there, the most notable: Cape Fear – filmed while I was living there.
“Forest Gump” was the biggest hit (filmied mostly here)
“Gator” & “White Lightning” w/good ol’ boy Burt Reynolds
“Forces of Nature” the globe has since been re-painted
“Legend of Bagger Vance” Ooooooohhhh, not only a movie about a golf match, it’s a FICTICIOUS golf match!
A few others of much lesser quality.
Oh yeah, an episode of the “Fugitive” remake show.
The skin-peelingly bad Moontrap was partially filmed in my hometown of Monroe, MI. The NASA mission control scenes were filmed in the contol room simulator at Fermii II nuclear power plant, where my dad works. The simulator room, BTW, bears about as much resemblance to mission control as an egg salad sandwich bears a resemblance to the stapler sitting on my desk.
Fun fact: My parents are extras in this movie! We went to the premiere! Which was held in Ann Arbor! I’m not sure how we returned to our normal lives after such Hollywood glamour… :rolleyes: Still, I guess I did get to see Bruce Campbell in the flesh, though I was still a few years from realizing exactly how cool he is.
In “Amistad” the scenes of the US Capitol are actually scenes of the Rhode Island state house in Providence.
But the best one is … “Dumb and Dumber.” It starts in Providence, and one of the landmarks they pass when they’re leaving town is pretty popular around here: “The Big Blue Bug.”
I grew up in Astoria, Queens (NY), and LOTS of movies/TV shows are filmed there, but very few actually take place there.
Among the few movies/TV shows that were actually supposed to take place in my neighborhood were:
“Going In Style,” a comedy about a bank robbery pulled off by senior citizens, was filmed AND set in Astoria. Everyone in the neighborhood came out to see the beloved “Ed Norton,” but had the misfortune to meet Art Carney instead! Carney was NOTHING like his character- a real jerk. George Burns, on the other hand, was a delight, as was (surprisingly) Lee Strasberg.
“All in the Family”/“Archie Bunker’s Place.” Of course, the show was FILMED in Hollywood, but it was supposed to take place in my neighborhood. All the footage shown during the credits of “Archie Bunker’s Place” was within a few blocks of my house (I had hot dogs at the Steinway Coffee Shop regularly).
“Don Juan De Marco.” Much of it was set in Manhattan, of course, but Johnny Depp’s character was supposed to be from my neighborhood (his father was “the dance king of Astoria”).
The one other movie connection we had in the old neighborhood was this: Christopher Walken is from Astoria, and his family ran the best bakery in town! If you wanted a quality birthday cake, you went down under the El train to Walken’s!
Today, I live in Austin, Texas. Among the movies filmed here and (partly) set here are:
Richard Linklater’s “Slacker” (boring) and “Dazed and Confused” (inconsistent but accurate and occasionally funny).
John Travolta’s “Michael” (Several scenes that are supposed to be Chicago are actually downtown Austin).
Dennis Quaid’s “D.O.A.”
Kevin Costner/Clint Eastwood’s “A Perfect World”
Robert Rodriguez (a local boy) made the awful horror movie “The Faculty” here.
Mike Judge’s underrated “Office Space” was filmed and set entirely here.
Some of “Sling Blade” was filmed in Austin- the cast featured several popular Austin musicians (like Ian Moore) in Dwight Yoakam’s hilariously bad backyard band.
Austinites recognize all kinds of local touches in Mike Judge’s “Beavis and Butthead Do America” and virtually every episode of “King of the Hill.”
in Burlington VT, where I live, they filmed two movies last summer; What Lies Beneath, and Me, Myself, and Irene. I actually saw Harrison Ford in a bar downtown called What Ales You? I was pretty excited, being the backwood hick I am.
Calgary:
Cool Runnings I think was filmed there (it would make sense since the film was SET in Calgary)
They are filming a movie at the Center Street bridge sometime this year… some big one but I can’t remember what it is or who is in it… (Stallone I think though…)
I live in Baltimore, known chiefly from the films of Barry Levinson and John Waters.
Also, Species II was shot partially on location in Columbia, MD where I work. Ironically, the scene featuring the Virginia billboard was shot on a road I drive down multiple times every weekday. And it’s a good 50 miles from Virginia.
I’m originally from Philly, and I know somebody who lives in the house next door to the one used as the exterior of Rocky’s house. But that’s stretching it a bit, isn’t it?
Dogzilla, my husband’s family includes several bee-keepers. His dad was a bee-keeper and so is his uncle. His uncle was a “technical consultant” on bee-keeping for that film.
In my home town, Fort Meade, FL, some scenes from a Sylvester Stallone movie (don’t remember which one) were filmed in the woods on the banks of the Peace River. A made for HBO movie about an abused child (sorry, not much of a movie buff–don’t know names)was filmed in the 100-year-old Episcopal church in our very old, historical town.
Lakeland, FL has had a couple of movies filmed there, but the most famous is “Edward Scissorhands”. The scenes at the shopping center where he encounters the styling salon? SouthGate on South Florida Avenue.
My home town is Wilmington NC. It is known as Wilmywood to moive folk. Currently we are the home of Dawson’s Creek, a Harpo movie, a Hallmark movie, and in a few weeks a feature film staring Martin Lawrence.
Movies filmed here include:
28 Days Mary Jane’s Last Dance
Muppets From Space Elmo in Grouchland
Bruno Takedown
Black Dog Shadrach
A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries Virus
I Know What You Did Last Summer The Jackal
To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday The Crow
Lolita Empire Records
When We Were Colored Chasers
The Hudsucker Proxy Dream a Little Dream
Sleeping with the Enemy The Exorcist Ill
Weekend at Bernie’s Little Monsters
Blue Velvet Maximum Overdrive
Silver Bullet Firestarter
Also here in Lakeland: “For the Love of the Game” with Kevin Costner. Spring training scenes at Tiger stadium (where the Detroit Tigers have spring training here in Lakeland). The swamp scenes from “The Waterboy” with Adam Sandler were filmed about an hour north of here.
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Mr. Blue Sky, I am so jealous. I have always wanted to live in Savannah, GA. Definitely my favorite place in the whole country.
My home town of Hermitage, Pennsylvania had two movies filmed in it. In 1986 there was a B-grade movie called Tiger Warsaw which starred Patrick Swayze. I heard a rumor that Swayze tried to pay the producers $3 million dollars to stop its release, but I don’t know whether that’s true. I suppose I should see the movie some time, since it was filmed in Hermitage. I heard it was pretty bad.
Hermitage had another movie with some scenes set in it: Night of the Living Dead. The movie was set in western Pennsylvania though it’s not specific exactly where, but the TV news broadcast in the movie keeps referring to towns running from Hermitage south to Pittsburgh. Some of the scenes were shot in the Morefield Cemetery, just two miles from my house.
Now I live in Jersey City, New Jersey, which is just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. If you see a picture of the Statue of Liberty or the Manhattan skyline, it was most likely taken in Jersey City (since Jersey City provides a great view of the skyline, and you can’t very well film Manhattan’s skyline while you’re in Manhattan.)
I don’t know of any movies that were set in Jersey City, but there’s enough filming going on here. There were some scenes for that big-budget Godzilla movie shot here a few years ago, which were touched up with a computer later so we could see Godzilla destroying stuff. Elton John had a bit part in some movie and the filming was done in an abandoned Jersey City movie theater, though I have no idea what the movie was.