# Obvious errors in Geography from movies set in your City **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 28, 2003, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379 "2003-01-28T01:09:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Morbo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morbo/32/389_2.png) [@Morbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morbo)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/1 "2003-01-28T01:09:29Z")
Ever watch a movie set in the town where you live, and suddenly you are jolted by a horrific error in geography? This happens quite a bit with San Francisco - they’ll abandon logic to get that money shot of the Golden Gate Bridge / Transamerica building / etc. Post your favorites! [ul] [li]The most famous one for the Bay Area, so I’ll get it out of the way: _The Graduate_. Benjamin is driving across the Bay Bridge to visit whatshername over at Cal in Berkeley. Nice helicopter shot of him crossing the bridge in his TR3. Except he’s driving Eastbound on the upper span - the wrong way! Good thing he seems to be the only car up there. (Which is hilarious in and of itself).\*[/li][li]_Star Trek IV_. Spock and Kirk are walking along Marina Green in San Francisco with a shot of the GGB in the background. Next shot, whatshername shows up in her pick up offering to give them a ride…back to San Francisco! Sure enough, they have been magically transported back to Sausalito.[/li][li]_The Wedding Planner_. Ugh. At one point they take a cab from Golden Gate Park to City Hall, and get stuck in traffic in the Presidio. I guess that’s possible, if the driver is intentionally screwing them. And speaking of Golden Gate Park, I don’t recall ever going to watch a movie ala _Cinema Paradiso_ where everyone hangs around outside in the park at night. And then the Hollywood storm arrives out of nowhere, starting with surprise lightning, thunder, and instant downpour. Nope - it don’t rain like that in SF.[/li][li]_Bullitt_. They’re all over the place in that chase scene - Marina, McLaren Park, Potrero, North Beach, the Marin Headlands at one point I think…[/li][/ul] \*Question for locals living in the Bay Area when they filmed that: how did they get Caltrans to agree to shut down the upper span for that scene? Can you imagine a film company trying to shut down the Bay Bridge these days? ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/2 "2003-01-28T01:29:26Z")
I live in the L.A. area and I watch “24”. 'nuff said. ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/3 "2003-01-28T01:34:18Z")
That shot in ‘True Lies’ where the capital, the Washington monument and the Jefferson Memorial all line up. Um. It don’t work. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/4 "2003-01-28T01:44:41Z")
In the movie For Love of the Game, Kevin Costner’s character is at spring training in Lakeland, FL (where I live). He’s staying in a several hundred thousand dollar condo ON THE BEACH with palm trees, surf, etc… Lakeland is about 50 miles inland. ---
**Author:** ![Ruby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/13edae/32.png) [@Ruby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruby)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/5 "2003-01-28T01:50:39Z")
Funny you should mention this… Last week I was watching a movie (so shoot me, I don’t remember the title) where the main characters were driving through Kokomo, Indiana, _with a mountain range in the background!_ Anyone that’s ever been in Kokomo knows it’s flatter than a pancake. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/6 "2003-01-28T01:57:06Z")
Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Steve Martin and John Candy travel from central Missouri into St. Louis. But first they magically materialize in Illinois and turn around so they can drive west across the Mississippi River. ---
**Author:** ![Vinnie\_Virginslayer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/53a042/32.png) [@Vinnie\_Virginslayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vinnie_Virginslayer)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/7 "2003-01-28T02:02:58Z")
_Signs_. There is no Bucks County Police, and people in Bucks County, PA don’t talk with a “twang”. Newtown Bucks County also is not 40 miles from Philadelphia, but a mere 15 miles from Philadelphia city limits. I’d say well over half of Bucks County is very affluent and worldy, and many celebrities and artists live there. People in Bucks County don’t talk about things happening “around the county”; it’s simply not that parochial. People from Bucks County don’t consider themselves “Bucks countians”, that’s not in the movie, but that seems to be the image. ---
**Author:** ![kasuo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8c91f0/32.png) [@kasuo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kasuo)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/8 "2003-01-28T02:03:11Z")
There was this one part in **Charlie’s Angels** where Cameron Diaz follows George McFly (I forgot his character’s name OKAY?) from the California Speedway and after what seemed like a couple seconds, ended up near the Port of Long Beach. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/9 "2003-01-28T02:04:03Z")
In _Forest Gump_, the park bench Forest is waiting on is on the inside of a square. In order for this to be correct, the bus would have to go one-way the wrong way past the bench. However, they did get the correct logo on the bus. At the time the story takes place (early 80’s), the local transit company was known as the Savannah Transit Authority (STA). In case you’re wondering, the bench used in the movie resides in the Tourist Info Center on MLK Blvd. ---
**Author:** ![Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Laughing\_Lagomorph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laughing_Lagomorph)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 3:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/10 "2003-01-28T03:07:21Z")
Not quite in Boston proper, but in the Travolta flick _A Civil Action_ the town where the wells were poisoned (Woburn MA) was made to look like it was waaaaaaaay out in the boonies, real rural and quiet. IRL Woburn is about 8 miles from downtown Boston, right on Rte. 128, with strip malls, parking lots, traffic jams, office parks, all the usual stuff in any Near Suburbia, USA. They obviously shot most of the “Woburn” scenes in North Carolina, or something (nothing against NC, the parts of it I’ve seen are much prettier than Woburn). ---
**Author:** ![Omorka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/50afbb/32.png) [@Omorka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omorka)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/11 "2003-01-28T03:14:17Z")
Well, there are a number of spaghetti Westerns in which someone goes over the mountains going from Houston to Austin, Galveston, or San Antonio. Oh, and there’s an impossible freeway sign in the one shot we see of Houston before it’s nuked in **ID4**. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/12 "2003-01-28T04:18:02Z")
In the Bond movie **Goldfinger** , the bad guy’s squad of female pilots take off from Bluegrass field, which is in Lexington in the center of Kentucky, and seconds later they are near Fort Knox, which is, I think, about a hundred miles to the west. The scene where Oddjob is driving the car also includes shots from the Lexington area. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/13 "2003-01-28T04:31:03Z")
In Meet The Parents, they turn right out of Louie’s and all of a sudden they’re on upper Main Street! That’s just not right. (Meet the Parents was largely filmed in my hometown of Port Washington, NY.) Some of the chase scenes in Striking Distance (Pittsburgh) really cracked my shit up. I guess they do it for effect, but the way they jumped around the city was hysterical. IIRC, they were in the parking lot under Kaufmann’s department store and exited onto the Fort Pitt bridge, then turned a corner and ended up in Polish Hill. Or something like that. It was pretty funny. ---
**Author:** ![Kakkerlak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bb73d2/32.png) [@Kakkerlak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kakkerlak)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/14 "2003-01-28T04:36:00Z")
When Meg Ryan drives along stalking Tom Hanks and his son in _Sleepless In Seattle_, they putt-putt their skiff south along Lake Union, then both boat and car magically skip over downtown and Elliott Bay to land on the saltwater beach in West Seattle. _Say Anything_ jumped shamelessly around neighborboods in Seattle and the suburbs, but that’s forgivable because it seldom uses landmarks. Ditto for _Singles_. I think that _Disclosure_ got the downtown geography of Pioneer Square in Seattle pretty close (I was a little preoccupied during that one), and I was pleased to see how lovely that segment of town can be if the addicts and vagrants aren’t present. ---
**Author:** ![Zap\_Rowsdower](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3da27b/32.png) [@Zap\_Rowsdower](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zap_Rowsdower)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/15 "2003-01-28T04:42:40Z")
**X-files** movie had a shot of Dallas with mountains in the background. Sort of related, one of the ealry Dallas TV episodes had Southfork hit by a hurricane! ---
**Author:** ![SpartanDC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b2d939/32.png) [@SpartanDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SpartanDC)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/16 "2003-01-28T04:51:20Z")
In one of those Morgan Freeman movies, either “Kiss The Girls” or “Along Came a Spider”, he runs across the entire NW portion of Washington, D.C., in about 10 minutes. And I can’t remember the movie, but I know there’s a film where a character goes into the Georgetown Metro station. Any D.C. resident knows, much to their frustration, that no such stop exists. (And don’t blame WMATA for that, blame the 1960s Georgetown upper crust and their subtle racism.) [nitpick] In “The American President” Sydney Ellen Wade’s house is a real place that a friend of mine lives in on Capitol Hill (it’s actually several apartments). But on the way to the White House she gets stuck in Dupont Circle. While getting stuck in Dupont Circle is all too easy, doing it between Capitol Hill and the White House would be quite a feat. Of course, this isn’t a true inconsistency, because they never establish that the house used is on Capitol Hill. Whatever. [/nitpick] I haven’t seen “Minority Report,” but I’m sure it probably has similar problems. ---
**Author:** ![Michael\_Ellis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Michael\_Ellis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Michael_Ellis)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/17 "2003-01-28T05:04:11Z")
_The Lost World_ - Just how did that one ship get through the channel without a navigator? Just where the hell was the Ingen pier, anyway? Etc. ---
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/18 "2003-01-28T05:31:04Z")
All the San Francisco ones and no mention of _The Rock_? I don’t even know the city all that well and I still thought that chase scene was spastic. They’d be driving through Chinatown, turn a corner and be in Golden Gate Park, then jump over the hill on top Lombard, then swing around a turn and be in the Presidio. At least they managed to throw in just about every SF cliche imaginable – they cut off a streetcar, narrowly avoided hitting a truck full of bottled water, IIRC they had some wacky crash involving Rice-a-Roni. And also there was a scene with the government sets up their base in the old deserted warehouse that is Pier 39. I can’t remember the exact number now, but whatever pier they said happened to be one of the most tourist-filled places on Fisherman’s Wharf. I think in real life there’s a movie or a Starbucks’ there. As for my other home, “The Dukes of Hazzard” was actually filmed in my hometown in Georgia, and they still managed to screw up. Frequently they’d show the Duke boys driving past farms with a majestic snow-peaked mountain in the background. Even in the mountains in GA you don’t get vistas like that, and they were supposed to be in the farmlands in central & southern GA. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/19 "2003-01-28T05:41:27Z")
_Enemy of the State_, directed by Tony Scott. Got DC geography backwards! The fleeing biologist Zavitz runs into a lingerie store on Columbia Road (which, as all DC residents know, is in Adams-Morgan). The G-men tracking him with satellite surveillance say “Target northbound on Connecticut”—the very next thing, he is actually heading _south_ on Connecticut Avenue into the tunnel under Dupont Circle where he gets creamed by a bus. Hel-_LO_? Dupont Circle is about a mile south of Columbia Road and Adams-Morgan! How did he get there by fleeing north, unless he circumnavigated the globe in a matter of minutes? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2003, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/20 "2003-01-28T06:25:01Z")
It’s pretty standard for movies shot in Detroit to have someone drive home across the Ambassador Bridge to some place in the (usually Oakland County, _i.e._ northern) suburbs. Unfortunately, the Ambassador Bridge links Detroit to Windsor, ON to its south, so the shots always show people _returning_ to downtown Detroit (which they are not supposed to have left, yet). I’ve seen this in a mid-70s potboiler about the car companies and in one of the Robo-Cop flicks. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379.md?page=2)