The idea for this thread came to mind after I recently saw The Road. At one point in the movie, the two protagonists come across the steel skeleton frame of boat that ran ashore on a beach. When viewing the scene, I immediately recognized the wrecked boat as the Peter Iredale–a ship that ran aground during a storm near Astoria, Oregon in 1906 and whose stripped-down bow has been rusting away on the beach ever since.
Of course, the wreckage of the Peter Iredale is something that would likely be only recognized by somebody like me who’s spent at least some time in the Astoria-Warrenton area on the northern Oregon coast. Have any of you watched a movie or TV show and unexpectedly saw a scene featuring a place that was not a famous landmark but was familiar to you?
In the mid '80s there was a short-lived show called Crazy Like A Fox that was set in San Francisco. I only remember it because of a chase scene that involved a very long set of stairs. A few months after seeing it, a friend and I were walking down a street in SF when we came upon that stairway.
The spouse works at the Old Royal Naval College (as was), and they’re constantly filming around the premises (the recent Sherlock Holmes film, National Treasure II, some version of Gulliver’s Travels, etc) or in the Painted Hall (Tomb Raider, etc), so we do a lot of that.
Also, it’s fun to location-spot in Spooks (I think it’s called MI5 in the US). The supposed headquarters (exterior) is actually the Freemason Hall in Covent Garden, which I’ve been inside (obviously, the inside on the show is all a set somewhere else).
I lived in Louisville when the Bill Murray movie Stripes was being filmed (the boot camp portion was filmed at Ft. Knox), and still remember the way downtown looked. When he’s driving the old lady to the airport, he doubles back about four times along the river, apparently cutting across at least one block. Of course, in the footage, it’s all continuous, as if it makes sense from a driving perspective.
When the kids jump out of his cab without paying, Murray’s parked in front of what was to be the Galleria, a shopping center. It’s now the Fourth Street Experience, sort of a bar/nightclub/restaurant mall.
I have fond memories of Louisville, especially the UofL basketball team (but get rid of Pitino – he stinks!).
I just (re)watched the Henry Thomas/Dabney Coleman movie Cloak & Dagger on youtube over the weekend (the whole thing is there in several parts). It made me realize how little the San Antonio Riverwalk and the Alamo has been changed in 25 years (at least). There was also a glimpse of a little bit of a San Antonio history I was unaware of, the Brackenridge Park Skyride (shutdown in the 90s, demolished in '02). I was hoping to see what the airport used to look like in the climax, but it seemed to me that they must have filmed those scenes in a studio or maybe in an airport in California somewhere. I was a little disappointed that a California mall was used as a stand-in for a local mall.
In The Sixth Sense Bruce Willis and the kid take a long bus ride to the wake for the ghost girl. The camera lingers on one gorgeous mansion (now made into apartments) on Green St during the ride.
The continuity of Rocky’s run in Rocky will make a native Philadelphian giggle.
The movie Young Einstein was made by Yahoo Serious, who came from Newcastle in Australia, a city where I have lived more than anywhere else. Various scenes were shot in Newcastle locations, including the city hall, the Newcastle Ocean Baths, and Fort Scratchley. And I once worked at the University of Sydney, and another scene from the movie was shot there (including some sheep, which are not usually found on the campus).
Groundhog Day and a part of Plane, Trains, and Automobiles was filmed in Woodstock, Illinois. I grew up near Woodstock and seeing those places pose as somewhere else is an interesting experience. I suppose that’s how people in Toronto feel at times.
The old UK series Morse was set in Oxford, where I used to live. There was lots of location footage of all the local sites, most of them familiar to tourists. Every so often, however, there were some very odd scenes. They’d be walking down an Oxford street, turn a corner, and suddenly be outside my parent’s house, halfway across the country. I guessing not many other people watching the show recognised the Fighting Cocks in St. Albans.
In Men in Black, the entrance to MIB headquarters is the air intakes for the Lincoln Tunnel.
And the climactic fight? Those UFOs exist and can be seen from the highway.
Ditto just about every chase scene shot in LA or the San Fernando Valley. I remember when watching “Lethal Weapon” that they were really fast, because they started a chase (on foot) in Van Nuys and turned a corner and they were on Sunset in Hollywood.
A lot of movies have been shot in Santa Fe and northern New Mexico, where I grew up. One that comes immediately to mind is John Carpenter’s Vampires, which I remember most clearly for its shots of St. Michael’s Cathedral; it’s where my brother got married.
The Devil’s Own had a couple of scenes shot on the old Bunker Boats* in Greenport NY, not far from my home town.
The college scenes in The Way We Were where shot at Union College while I was attending. One scene shows Robert Redford putting a fishing rod in the hand of the college’s statue of Chester A. Arthur.**
Once you’ve visited Paris or London or New York, you see plenty of this.
*They used to fish for bunkers; i.e., menhaden, which were used for fertilizer and fish meal.
**Arthur was a graduate. Jimmy Carter also attended classes there, though not for credit.
The very, very bad film Reindeer Games was shot in my hometown, Prince George, BC, which is not exactly known for its movie industry. I recognized a lot of places, but most particularly, the casino in the film is actually the Elks Hall near my high school. I wrote my 12th grade English exam there, my graduation dance was there, etc. They left the tacky-assed neon lighting from the movie up on the hall, so it’s even more recognizable now.
Finding shows and movies filmed in Toronto is a whole lot easier, but one in particular is Hollywood Bollywood – I’m like 95% positive that one of the scenes was shot on the roof of a friend’s condo building.
I remember watching a “making of” feature about US Marshalls before it came out and they showed the New York scenes that they were filming in downtown Chicago. It was at Jackson and Wells where I used to work.
To make it look like New York, they dumped a bunch of trash all over the street.
Cleveland sites have appeared in several movies. The onion-domed Eastern Orthodox church seen in The Deer Hunter is in Tremont, an ethnic neighborhood here. In Air Force One, the government building in Kazakhstan on which the U.S. paratroopers land at the beginning of the movie is actually Severance Hall, home of the Cleveland Orchestra: Severance Hall - Wikipedia. There’s then a quick interior shot of the paratroopers storming down an ornate marble staircase with a stained-glass window in the background; that was shot at the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, several miles away: Cuyahoga County Courthouse - Wikipedia. The street fight scene between Spider-Man and the Sandman in Spider-Man 3 was largely filmed on Euclid Avenue, just a few blocks away from that, and some of the exterior shots from A Christmas Story were filmed on Public Square, also close by. The Parker family house is now in private hands and available for tours: http://www.achristmasstoryhouse.com/
There are many recognizable Pittsburgh landmarks in the first Inspector Gadget movie, too, especially PPG Place: PPG Place - Wikipedia
The Chevy Chase film Funny Farm was filmed, in part, in Townshend, Vt. The film crew built a gazebo on the town common which still stands to this day.
