I used to live about 15 miles from Tallulah Gorge, where overhead shots were taken and used for Wakanda in the Avengers and Black Panther movies.
The 1979 movie, Promises in the Dark, was filmed in West Hartford CT and at Hall High School when I was at that school. The football scenes were off the real Hall High team, and the real coach John Robinson. Everyone was excited at Hollywood coming to our school, and the girls were especially excited at Lorenzo Lamas coming to our school.
The movie started Marsha Mason and Ned Beatty and it wasn’t very good.
I live within spitting distance of where they filmed the exteriors for “Chotchkie’s” (the restaurant where Jennifer Aniston worked) in Office Space. And of course, Dazed and Confused is basically an Austin highlight reel.
How many pieces of flair do you have on?
Unfortunately, it’s a bank now. Much less flair.
Nothing good lasts…
Santa Rosa was also used by Hitchcock for Shadow of a Doubt. Good use of local color.
I grew up in Los Angeles, even more specifically, Culver City. I walked by the Thalberg Building at MGM every day on my way to school. So, for me, it was annoying to recognize real places in movies/TV, because it was jarring and took me out of the story. One particular Twilight Zone episode had major scenes shot a block from my house and at the local library (that I worked at in high school), so that episode wasn’t scary at all!
When I worked in Downey, we were very near the area where houses had been condemned for the 105 fwy. The fwy construction was delayed for decades, so it was very run down and abandoned looking. I used to walk at lunchtime, and one street almost overnight was redone – houses repainted, new lawns put in, everything spic and span. They used it to shoot scenes for a Kerouac movie (Heartbeat or something like that, IIRC). It was surreal and kinda cool.
For a while in the 80s and 90s, there was a rule that all movies set in Washington, DC had to feature a shot of Adams-Morgan with either Lautrec’s or Madam’s Organ visible in the background. A Few Good Men had several great exterior shots filmed in DC, but the one that jumps out at me was when he visited the newsie across from there. DC does not have newsies in the NYC sense but they slapped together a booth outside of (I think, it’s been a while) Idle Time Books. Clint Eastwood sprinted through this block in In the Line of Fire. More recently, Wonder Woman '84 was a real love letter to 1980s Georgetown and featured the Georgetown Theater in several shots. I wonder if Patty Jenkins knew that the Georgetown was a porn house in 1984, with noontime shows for local office workers on a lunch break?
A lot of movies were filmed at least partially in my small home town.
The Goonies, Kindergarden Cop, Free Willy, Short Circuit, Teen Age Mutant Ninja Turtles, some others. Astoria Oregon is a very picturesque little town of about 10,000 people. Like a much smaller San Fransico not quite ruined yet.
Here is a good picture in an article about the movies.
The Illinois Capitol Building in Springfield was the location for interior shots in Legally Blonde 2, standing in for the interiors of THE Capitol in Washington. I was actually supposed to be an extra in that film but I got terribly sick during filming. Got to see Reese Witherspoon, though, so that was nice.
I had been inside that building countless times before filming, and have been in countless times since.
For a while, it seemed like every trip downtown (in Chicago) included streets being closed. “Sorry, folks, you’ll have to go down to LaSalle. They’re filming today.” The kids were excited, and would ask what movie. “Ah dunno. It’s some Batman flick.” Sometimes they wouldn’t know, and one time it was Spider-Man. So we’d eagerly await the movie, and sure enough, Spidey had to save some people on the El. And we were at a barricade only three blocks away!
The mall scenes of Bad Santa were also filmed in Del Amo mall.
Thanks! I like Hitchcock and Santa Rosa so perhaps I’ll have to check it out. It was filmed in 1943 so Santa Rosa might not be quite as recognizable to me, who only started visiting with Ms. Charming and Rested around 2006.
A lot of scenes have been filmed in the Del Amo mall. Can’t think of any off the of my head now, but I know I’ve seen it many times.
I like it a lot! Film debut IIRC of Hume Cronyn.
In 8th grade (1979), our class took a tour of TRW, a local aerospace company in Redondo Beach. The tour guide pointed out that exteriors for the Star Trek episode Operation: Annihilate * were filmed outside some of the buildings, as they were futuristic looking for the 60s. About 20 years years later, I worked there near the same building. The main building in the episode is actually the cafeteria.
- Kirk’s brother’s planet attacked by flying eggplant - Spock’s vision saved by never before mentioned Vulcan third eyelid
I Met a Man with Yellow Eyes was filmed in my neighborhood. I don’t recall if it’s ever mentioned where the story is supposed to take place, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to be St. Petersburg, FL. Speaking of which, the dog track scene in Oceans 11 was filmed at our local Derby Lane. They had a call for extras and a few of the ladies in my office at the time went. They could not stop talking about how skinny (“they had to safety pin the back of his pants!”) and smelly Brad Pitt was 
And, not a movie (and also in Torrance, which is L.A. county) but Beverly Hills 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were filmed at my high school rival, Torrance High.
Years ago I saw a movie where people were driving to San Francisco, and they showed the people driving on a road with a view of SF that I just knew was not a main approach. I found the spot and it became a fast favorite of mine.
In the 1970s and 1980s, there’d be nobody there! But in the 1990s the secret got out, and now this area is jammed packed.
Marin CA: In the 1997 sci fi film Gattaca, the Marin Civic Center, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is a rocket port. I got a laugh out of that while watching the film. I’m reminded of it every time I’m on Hwy 101 headed for San Francisco.
As a UCLA alumni, there are way too many films to list. I’ll stick to ones that were filmed while I was a student and saw the filming going on.
Breathless (the Richard Gere remake)
The Sure Thing
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3
Fright Night
The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (not actually on campus, but on fraternity row)
An episode of The A-Team
The Straight Story (1999) is a charming story about an elderly man who want to see his estranged brother before he dies. Having lost his Divers License he is stuck driving his lawn tractor to visit him. The story is about his trip from central Iowa to South Western Wisconsin. Now, most of the filming is set in cornfields which could be anywhere but there are a few memorable moments (particularly when he crosses the Mississippi) near La Crosse that I can identify.
David Lynch directed it, huh, it was a good movie I should watch it again.