# Movies filmed on a location you know well **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [September 13, 2022, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515 "2022-09-13T19:56:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/21 "2022-09-13T20:58:50Z")
Venice, Italy, is another city where I instantly recognize lots of landmarks, since I was there for Easter in 2000. There’s one movie (I don’t remember the name) that starts with a woman snapping photos as she strolls along the embankment near the Bridge of Sighs, and each time the shutter clicks there’s an insert showing what she’s supposedly looking at. None of the images are within the realm of possibility. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/22 "2022-09-13T21:00:38Z")
In the movie Silver Streak, there is a shot of the train coming into St. Louis, but it is actually Calgary. Downtown Calgary subbed for Metropolis in the first Superman movie. Calgary also stood in for Detroit, I think, in Exit Wounds. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/23 "2022-09-13T21:13:43Z")
_The Place Beyond the Pines_ was shot in Schenectady, and it was fun picking out locations as I watched it. It did a good job of getting things right. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/24 "2022-09-13T21:14:06Z")
The original **Gone in 60 Seconds** (1974) has a 40 minute car chase filmed in Long Beach and LA’s South Bay. Unlike the remake and almost every film featuring a chase scene in LA, this one is 100% geographically consistent - No Nick Cage jumping a curb and ending up on the other side of town. When I was 17 (1980) some buddies and I saw the film at one of the Laemmle’s art houses and a few days later we successfully traced most of the chase from memory. This is before we had it on VHS or any help from the Internet. Most of the route was unchanged in 1980. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/25 "2022-09-13T21:16:07Z")
Some other internal scenes with glass elevators were shot at the Plaza of the Americas on the western edge of downtown Dallas. I used to eat lunch there all the time during the first stint that I worked downtown. I also used to take the DART train from Pearl Station, which is right across from the old Dallas High School which was used as the run-down precinct headquarters. The scene in the movie “The Chase” where Charlie Sheen kidnaps Kristy Swanson and gets on the freeway starting the eponymous chase was filmed at the Sam Houston Tollway @ Bellaire northbound exit- I drove through that intersection constantly as a kid- it was very near my house. ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/26 "2022-09-13T21:16:51Z")
> [@veryfrank](#): > > Torontonians can also probably excuse themselves from this competition, as we’d swamp the place. Oh yeah. I lived in Toronto for over 40 years, and I recognize a lot of places. The exteriors in _Hairspray_, for example, were all shot in Toronto. Lord Lansdowne school (near College and Spadina) was Tracy’s high school, and during her opening song, a PCC streetcar passes by–the TTC keeps a couple of them maintained for movie shoots. _Billy Madison_’s elementary school was the same one I went to, and the school you see in the background when he’s playing with the kids in the playground, was the middle school I attended. I didn’t go to his high school, but I could have–it was one of the high schools I could have gone to aafter middle school. Still, I recognized it immediately, after taking swimming lessons there as a child and passing by so often in my car in later years. Back to _Silver Streak_: Toronto’s Union Station stood in for the train stations in Los Angeles, Kansas City, and Chicago. I’ve used the washroom where Gene Wilder applies makeup, and certainly walked through the concourse many times. I’ll think of more. There are so many. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/27 "2022-09-13T21:24:42Z")
The 2012 movie **Promised Land** (which sucked IMO) was filmed locally. They used our friend’s farm market for some scenes, changing the name of the business to Rob’s Guns, Groceries, Guitars and Gas. [![](https://i.imgur.com/ha8CMPI.jpg) ](https://i.imgur.com/ha8CMPI.jpg) One observation my friends noted was that Frances McDormand was very nice. Most of the others (Matt Damon) avoided interactions with them, but Ms McDormand was really friendly and hung out with the family. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/28 "2022-09-13T21:25:06Z")
> [@Spoons](#): > > Toronto’s Union Station stood in for the train stations in **Los Angeles** , Kansas City, and Chicago. bolding mine Which is funny, because LA Union Station often doubles for _other_ train stations. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/29 "2022-09-13T21:25:40Z")
A few movies filmed in Seattle, my old hometown, but very few shot there _extensively._ Most of them got some obligatory backgrounds of the Needle and the waterfront and stuff, and then decamped to Vancouver. One exception is the grungy dark-SF thriller _Class of 1999._ > **[Class of 1999](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_of_1999)** > > Class of 1999 is a 1990 American science fiction thriller film directed by Mark L. Lester. It is the director's follow-up to his 1982 film Class of 1984. > In an alternate 1990s, violence in American high schools had spiraled out of control after a series of mass shootings results in the constitution being abolished and private businesses banned, with areas in most major cities being taken over by youth gangs, resulting in some schools shutting down. Two major gangs vie for control of the former ... It filmed almost exclusively in Seattle, without trying to hide that or pretend it was somewhere else. The streets and buildings are very familiar to residents of Wallingford and Capitol Hill. Too bad the movie’s kinda crappy. A much better filmed-in-Seattle movie with recognizable locations is Mamet’s _House of Games._ On the flip side of the premise, a few months ago I spent a week in Tunisia, and I made a point of visiting Kairouan, the old religious capital which doubled for period Cairo in _Raiders of the Lost Ark._ Some of the city has changed in the last few decades, but a lot of it hasn’t. It was really fun to see how recognizable much of it still was, and to realize that pretty much all those varied scenes and locations in the movie were filmed in a limited area of seven or eight blocks, just shifting the camera a bit to aim at a different door or using the same street looking back the other direction. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/30 "2022-09-13T21:27:36Z")
Toronto substituted for Chicago in _ **Due South** _, which is painfully obvious if you’ve ever spent any time there. It took me a while, but I think I’ve nailed the location of the phone tower featured prominently in the background of an early episode. (Behind the Walmart at Pharmacy and Eglinton.) ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/31 "2022-09-13T21:31:41Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Which is funny, because LA Union Station often doubles for _other_ train stations. Well, in fairness, the Los Angeles part of the movie does show the front of LA’s Union Station when Gene Wilder gets out of his taxi. But when he boards the train, he does so from one of the platforms in Toronto’s Union Station. Then, when the train pulls out of “Los Angeles”, the city skyline is that of Toronto–there are a number of recognizable buildings (the Bank of Montreal building particularly stands out). ---
**Author:** ![Hatchie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hatchie/32/3983_2.png) [@Hatchie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hatchie)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/32 "2022-09-13T21:48:25Z")
There’s a cafe near where I live in the Roslindale part of Boston, and it looks like it hasn’t changed since the 40s - it’s the Pleasant on Washington street - I go there a lot. I overheard the bartender say they had been filming a movie there, a new take on the Boston Strangler story. Looks like Keira Knightley and Carrie Coon are in it, will come out in 2023. ---
**Author:** ![Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/intergalactic_gladiator/32/112_2.png) [@Intergalactic\_Gladiator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Intergalactic_Gladiator)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/33 "2022-09-13T21:48:46Z")
One chase scene in Dark Knight is very obviously Lower Wacker Drive. ---
**Author:** ![Lightnin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lightnin/32/180_2.png) [@Lightnin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lightnin)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/34 "2022-09-13T21:50:40Z")
_Mr. Roosevelt_, a relatively recent indie film, had a scene filmed and set at Twin Falls, along the Barton Creek Greenbelt in Austin. I- and many, many other Austinites- swam there a lot. As a matter of fact, I almost drowned in that exact spot. A climactic scene in _Barbarossa_, a Willie Nelson and Gary Busey Western (1982) was filmed at Pedernales Falls in Texas. That was a summer vacation spot for me as a kid, and I actually filmed with a Super-8 camera in that exact location. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/35 "2022-09-13T21:54:58Z")
The part of the segment “[The Crate](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXeW1HiwAtE)” from Creepshow was filmed in Margaret Morrison hall at Carnegie Mellon when I was a student. We interviewed Hal Holbrook and Adrienne Barbeau for The Tartan, CMU’s newspaper. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/36 "2022-09-13T21:56:13Z")
The HBO miniseries _White Lotus_ was filmed in early 2021 at the Maui Four Seasons. My family vacationed there during Spring break that same year. When the show aired in July of that year, it was amazing how many scenes we had been in the same locations just a few months before. ---
**Author:** ![FinsToTheLeft](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finstotheleft/32/2930_2.png) [@FinsToTheLeft](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinsToTheLeft)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/37 "2022-09-13T22:08:34Z")
> [@veryfrank](#): > > Torontonians can also probably excuse themselves from this competition, as we’d swamp the place. The TV show _Nikita_ was a great game of Spot Toronto. I agree generally, but I’m still going to claim Scott Pilgrim as it was shot in my neighbourhood. It was shot when my kids were both under 6 and they closed the park, removed the play equipment, and dumped fake snow. Some unhappy faces in my house that week. ---
**Author:** ![mtnmatt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a3d4f5/32.png) [@mtnmatt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mtnmatt)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/38 "2022-09-13T22:12:34Z")
The Kevin Kline movie “In and Out” was set in Indiana but for some reason they shot it in Northport, NY where I lived at the time. It is a little harbor town and they added a fake second story to “Skippers Pub” (nautical themed) to replicate a small Midwest town. We regularly go to Crystal Cove State Beach in SoCal, where one of the cottages is known for being a setting of Beaches, the Cher movie. This past weekend the hurricane that hit at a full moon high tide caused terrible erosion (can’t figure out how to add a pic) ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/39 "2022-09-13T22:13:59Z")
_Smokin’ Aces_ was filmed where I grew up. I’ve been to that boat launch many, many times. There is an old ski movie, _Winter A-Go-Go_, that I can identify individual trees and rocks that I rocognize. It was made in 1965. ---
**Author:** ![griffin1977](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/977dab/32.png) [@griffin1977](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/griffin1977)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2022, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515/40 "2022-09-13T22:17:59Z")
A few from near my hometown in the UK, a small village in the south of England: - The Stonehenge scene in National Lampoon’s European Vacation was filmed in the Berkshire Downs just outside town (which is nowhere near stonehenge and not particularly similar to it, but not exactly the most geographically accurate movie 🙂) - The [Resistance Base](https://www.getreading.co.uk/news/berkshire-history/greenham-common-star-wars-battle-21691812) in the new star wars films was CG-ified version Greenham Common Airbase in Newbury. - [Highclere Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highclere_Castle) is in a ton of stuff. It’s “Downton Abbey” and the location used for the orgy in Eyes Wide Shut to name a couple. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/movies-filmed-on-a-location-you-know-well/971515.md?page=3)