[QUOTE=Morbo]
Scorpio gets stabbed on Mt Davidson, and limps down towards Kezar Stadium - totally conceivable. Bullitt - not so much.
[/QUOTE]
I haven’t seen it yet, but do you mean Mt Sutro? Davidson is pretty far from Kezar when one is enstabbened.
[QUOTE=Spoons]
Hmmm… it features both CJAY 92 and Don McKellar. Gonna have to think hard about seeing this one. 
Seriously, thanks for the tip. In spite of my aversion to both CJAY and films with McKellar in them, this sounds like one I might actually enjoy. Thanks again!
Aside for those not in the know: the +15 (“Plus Fifteen”) that Ludy is referring to is a system for getting around downtown Calgary. It consists mainly of enclosed bridges crossing streets between buildings. The bridges are about fifteen feet above street level, hence the name. The system is quite extensive, connecting through such places as hotels, malls, and office towers, allowing one to go pretty much anywhere and do nearly anything in the downtown area without going outside, making it handy in our cold, snowy winters.
[/QUOTE]
Except from my office to my bank. I have to brave the weather for about 2 blocks to deposit my cheques.
No I am not bitter 
I thought The Sopranos did a great job of capturing a few specific slices of Jerseyana. Although I’d like someone to explain the car trip taken in the opening credits, it seems quite loopy to me.
I thought Slackers did a good job of capturing a very small slice of Austin. But no, the city is not all white people between 20 and 35 and much exists more than 10 blocks off the Drag.
[QUOTE=Troy McClure SF]
I haven’t seen it yet, but do you mean Mt Sutro? Davidson is pretty far from Kezar when one is enstabbened.
[/QUOTE]
Oh no. Definitely Davidson. (You’ll understand when you see it - the cross is rather memorable). I myself have hiked from there to Kezar - it’s not so bad, maybe a few miles tops. Better than having him stabbed on Coit Tower and limping to Fort Mason or something.
I think the movie Witness did a very good job capturing the filth in the bathrooms at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.
[QUOTE=phungi]
I think the movie Witness did a very good job capturing the filth in the bathrooms at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.
[/QUOTE]
In view of the thread title, I’m not quite sure how to take this comment.
[QUOTE=dalej42]
I’m not from San Francisco, but I remember finding a web site on *Vertigo * which showed the shots in San Francisco and compared them to the present day locations.
How accurate would the Bay Area dopers say *Vertigo * shows San Francisco?
[/QUOTE]
Since very little of the movie is dependant on SF’s specific geography, we’re able to see lots of different parts of the City without it being too incongruous (especially given the premise that Scottie is tailing Madeline as she wonders around to different locations).
Probably the two biggest differences anyone touring the locations will notice is that the mission at San Juan Batista doesn’t have a bell tower (it’s a matte painting in the movie), and that Fort Point is blocked off under the GG Bridge, so you can’t retrace her steps as she takes that dunk in the bay.
I like that there are little throwaway moments (Scottie mentions the Top of the Mark, for example) that add to the local authenticity of the film.
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
The Back to the Future movies did a good job with the 50’s middle-America town square. I don’t know where it was filmed but it could have been anywhere in the midwest.
[/QUOTE]
It was on a Hollywood backlot. If you take the Universal Studios bus tour, you will see it (if it’s not being used/repurposed for something filming at the time).
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Country was well done too. They paid attention to the little things, like when Sissy Spacek made Mel Gibson’s lunch to take to the field, and she put his hamburger patty between thick slices of bread rather than on a hamburger bun. Now that’s country.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, and Country starred Jessica Lange (in the same year). The movie you’re thinking of is The River.
[QUOTE=Spoons]
I lived in Toronto for years and seeing productions filming, about to film, or just finished filming, was a not uncommon sight. Yet in spite of the fact that Toronto stands in for many other cities, very few movies/shows are specifically set in Toronto. The only two that are probably best known internationally (as opposed to local productions primarily for Canadian distribution) are the movie Canadian Bacon and the Simpsons episode where the family goes to Toronto. Neither of those did a good job, but in fairness, neither set out to do so. They did show the CN Tower and that landmark is in Toronto, but outside of that, there was little else to suggest Toronto was anything like it actually is.
[/QUOTE]
Check out David Cronenberg’s films. A majority of them take place in Toronto (where he usually films).
[QUOTE=phungi]
I think the movie Witness did a very good job capturing the filth in the bathrooms at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.
[/QUOTE]
Wasn’t that in Reading Terminal, back when there still was a Reading Terminal?
[QUOTE=pepperlandgirl]
It’s still about twenty miles (or more, depending on what part of Pasadena they’re in). I know that in some parts of the country that is a “really long drive” even though it seems like right next door to Californians…
[/QUOTE]
I did a bit of research. According to the HBO
“In Azusa, Carmen, invites Claire to stay awhile to escape the desert heat.”
In the Six Feet Under universe, Azusa is in the desert.
[QUOTE=AuntiePam]
Dyersville isn’t all that close to me, but I thought Field of Dreams nicely represented rural Iowa, exteriors and interiors, and the people.
It’s really rare for a movie or TV show to use an actual cornfield. It was critical for this movie.
[/QUOTE]
It was filmed the summer of 1988 which featured a terrible drought in the Midwest. The producers had to spend lots of money irrigating the hell out of the cornfield to keep it green and to get the corn to grow tall enough so the ball players could properly appear out of it. It was the only healthy cornfield in the area. But they still had to paint the grass on the ballfield green after the sod they brought in didn’t take. 
[QUOTE=pravnik]
Actually, I think I retract this one. IMDB says it was shot near Albuquerque, New Mexico, and looking at the stills, yeah, totally New Mexico.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, part of it was filmed in Marfa, Texas. (As was Giant and There will be Blood)
Hawaii is always done pretty poorly. Don’t even get me started on Hawaii Five-O.
We used to live in Hawker. Wolf Creek pretty much nailed it.
[QUOTE=SpoilerVirgin]
The only way I can stand to watch Monk, even though I very much enjoy Tony Shalhoub’s performance, is to pretend that it takes place in some mythical unnamed city instead of San Francisco. The total wrongness of everything related to the Bay Area is just too annoying.
[/QUOTE]
Early episodes of Monk were actually filmed in the city. I remember being delighted-- San Francisco is impossible to fake, so I keep an eye out for the real thing. Then they moved filming elsewhere. I stopped watching thanks to an episode where they were in a Colma cemetery and you could see the Golden Gate in the background.
The Sopranos captured North Jersey (and more specifically, Bergen County) so well sometimes that it made me homesick. I’d watch just to see stores, buildings, roads, etc, that reminded me from home-- including my favorite diner and the candy shop down the street from my Dad’s business.
Unfortunately the only movies filmed and or set in Montgomery have revolved around the Montgomery Bus Boycott or some other aspect of Civil Rights:
The Vernon Johns Story (1989/1994*)
The Long Walk Home (1989)
The Rosa Parks Story (2002)
Boycott (2001)
While they may be faithful to Montgomery in the 1950s, things have changed a LOT in the last half-century in terms of architecture, economics, race relations, politics, etc…
Gary Sinise filmed a miniseries about George Wallace that went through the 1970s/1980s, the post-shooting scenes dealt mostly with his physical/emotional/marital problems, plus the miniseries was was filmed in California and that was painfully obvious in several scenes. An oddity was that its inaccuracies were the reverse of most movies about the modern south; while some movies tend to portray southern urban areas as Hee-Haw & Mayberry-esque, having Sacramento sub for Montgomery made it look a lot more like Birmingham or parts of Atlanta with skyscrapers and urban sprawl, plus the Governor’s Mansion looked like a Greek revival plantation mansion with a huge porch and columns and an enormous lawn rather than the Italianate Edwardian era house that’s actually in a bad area of town (used to be mansions but now the neighborhood’s run down).
*Vernon Johns was the minister at Dexter St. Baptist Church who was replaced by MLK; segments were filmed for a docudrama in 1989 featuring James Earl Jones as VJ, then more were filmed 5 years later to make it into a full length TV movie
[QUOTE=romansperson]
I didn’t know this movie was filmed in Cleveland until I started watching it, and that first scene in Public Square put me right back there as a little kid. My mom loved to do her Christmas shopping at Higbee’s every year and I remember being one of those little kids looking at the elaborate window displays.
[/QUOTE]
Was it filmed in Cleveland? Because in the books it’s set in Northern Indiana, and both the books and the movie are exactly right.
{Regarding Dirty Harry).
[QUOTE=Morbo]
Oh no. Definitely Davidson. (You’ll understand when you see it - the cross is rather memorable). I myself have hiked from there to Kezar - it’s not so bad, maybe a few miles tops. Better than having him stabbed on Coit Tower and limping to Fort Mason or something.
[/QUOTE]
Coit Tower to Fort Mason is just over one mile, and it’s nearly a straight shot Chestnut St / Columbus Ave / Bay St. Mount Davidson to Kezar is well over 2 miles, and much more hilly and twisty.
[Of course, Scorpio might well have had a car parked at the entrance to Mt. Davidson Park, so he could have simply driven to the “hospital next to Kezar Stadium”.]
I’ll agree with you that Dirty Harry captures the feel of San Francisco, even if there are some nitpicky errors (e.g. when Scorpio is bouncing Harry all over the City from phonebooth to phonebooth, and the unusual route to the Santa Rosa Airport). However, most of the movie was at least filmed in SF – the main exception being the bank robbery scene, which was a Hollywood “New York street” set – and locations were generally identified correctly.
