# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![Alphagene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Alphagene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alphagene)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2003, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/81 "2003-02-01T02:36:21Z")
I’ve mentioned this before, but _Glengarry Glenn Ross_ was filmed at locations in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn but was orginally written as a play taking place in Chicago. So it’s funny to hear that Moss plans to meet friends at Chicago’s famous Como Inn later that night before returning to work the next day. 1700 miles round trip in a few hours? I doubt Moss could have afforded that. Not with his recent sales figures, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2003, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/82 "2003-02-01T03:18:41Z")
Hey, Texas has mountains. Lots of 'em. None of them are anywhere near Houston, San Antonio, or Austin, though. “The Alamo” was not filmed in San Antonio, but in Brackettville, Texas. Originally, they’d thought to save money by filming in Mexico … until someone thought about what the Texans might think about that. The entire movie set is still there, by the way – it’s a popular tourist attraction now. Interestingly enough, Brackettville IS fairly close to the Mexican border. Maybe the Duke got confused… DOA, starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan, was filmed at Southwest Texas State University, in San Marcos… about thirty miles south of Austin. I was a student there at the time, and we found lots of hilarious moments. Two of the best: We have an exterior shot of a tall building with oddly shaped windows (the windows are much narrower at the tops than at the bottoms, like truncated triangles). This is the girls’ dorm that Meg Ryan lives in (actually, it was the library). We then cut to an interior shot of Meg Ryan’s dorm room. Since we’re supposed to be paying attention to the actors, we aren’t supposed to notice that the window in Meg’s room is a perfectly ordinary square window… Awhile later, Dennis and Meg go to attend a funeral. It’s being held in a round brick building – cake shaped. The building is surrounded by ornamental ponds, and the only way to get to it is by four concrete bridges, right? (The Speech and Drama building, in case anyone cares.) While in this building, Meg and Dennis are chased around by a shadowy guy who shoots at them. They climb a series of ladders, eventually winding up on the roof of the building. Fortunately, there’s a ladder leading down. They climb down it… …and find themselves in an alley opening out on Sixth Street, in downtown Austin. What the hell? Did someone forget all those lovely ornamental ponds we saw earlier? Lastly, an old horror movie called “Piranha” was also filmed in San Marcos, mostly in the local rivers and at a local tourist trap, Aquarena Springs. It’s not a bad monster movie, and features a sort of government-bred superpiranha, created to win the Vietnam War, getting loose and devouring the residents of this rural community, right? Local folks laugh themselves sick at the finale. Bradford Dillman leaps into his speedboat and rips up the river, trying to beat the horde of superpiranhas to the lake, right? Actually, they shot footage of Dillman in about four local waterways, and spliced the footage together. If you’re local, it looks like he’s going all OVER hell and half of Georgia before he finally gets to Canyon Lake… ---
**Author:** ![SolGrundy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@SolGrundy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SolGrundy)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2003, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/83 "2003-02-01T07:02:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by rsvp9146 \* > \*\*I beg to differ. Dukes of Hazzard was filmed around Lake Sherwood, CA. I grew up in the area and remember them shutting down Potrero road all the time to do shooting. This road is used ALL the time for location work. You see a horse ranch with a white picket fence and mountains in the background. it’s Potrero Rd. \*\* That may be, but the series was also filmed in Georgia. From the link that **Jeff Olsen** posted: > [@](#): > > The first five episodes were filmed in Covington, Georgia, where a real town was used. The show’s car chase and country scenes were also filmed in various parts of Covington and Oxford in Georgia. There was a real Duke Farm which was located in Oxford, Georgia. The Boar’s Nest which is still standing, was also filmed in Oxford, Georgia. In addition to Covington, scenes from a couple of episodes were filmed in my hometown of Conyers. Several of my classmates were extras (as orphans being menaced by Boss Hogg’s nefarious schemes) in one episode. And Covington (the neighbor city) was always having special event days where there’d be parades and you could have your picture taken with the General Lee and such. I’d always assumed the show was set in GA. Did they ever actually say what state they were in? Whatever the case, I don’t know from Kentucky, but I do know that you don’t get Los Angeles-style mountains anywhere in mid-to-south Georgia, so my original point still stands. ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2003, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/84 "2003-02-01T07:28:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Pucky Schumer \* > In "Die Hard II,’’ Bruce Willis is supposedly at Dulles airport outside Washington, D.C. > He makes a call from a pay phone that says Pacific Bell. This reminds me of the Mel Gibson movie “Forever Young”. Wasn’t that set on the East Coast, or at least not in California? If not, my nit-pick is wrong… Anyway, I believe Mel also uses a Pac Bell pay phone, _plus_ you can see a [Ralphs](http://www.ralphs.com) grocery store in the background. Ralphs is a Southern California-only gorcery chain. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2003, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/85 "2003-02-01T14:13:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SolGrundy \* > \*\*I’d always assumed the show was set in GA. Did they ever actually say what state they were in? \*\* At one point, the actor who played Boss Hogg was on a game show, and he said, “Hazzard County, Georgia.” Also, I can remember _Entertainment Tonight_ talking about the show being “set in the fictional Hazzard County, Georgia.” ---
**Author:** ![ElwoodCuse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/edb3f5/32.png) [@ElwoodCuse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElwoodCuse)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/86 "2003-02-03T06:11:00Z")
In The Naked Gun 2 1/2, Drebin holds Robert Goulet out a window in DC and you can see Times Square, but since it’s a ZAZ movie it’s a joke and not a mistake. ---
**Author:** ![S\_Puppy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@S\_Puppy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/S_Puppy)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/87 "2003-02-03T14:33:30Z")
North by Northwest There is no house on top of Mt Rushmore. ---
**Author:** ![TheSquirrelfish](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a6a055/32.png) [@TheSquirrelfish](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TheSquirrelfish)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/88 "2003-02-03T15:04:02Z")
The District(Washington DC supposedly) is filmed a 12 minute jog from where Baywatch was filmed. ---
**Author:** ![Politzania](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@Politzania](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Politzania)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/89 "2003-02-03T15:34:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ruby \* > \*\*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. \*\* Was it [Terror Squad](http://us.imdb.com/Title?0094125)? I don’t remember mountain ranges in this movie - but it does have terrorists crossing the US-Canadian border via a small boat (a neat trick to reach ANYWHERE in Indiana, much less the center of the state!) in order to blow up our (non-existent) nuclear power plant. Chuck Conners deserved a much better movie than this. ---
**Author:** ![Tomcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Tomcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tomcat)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/90 "2003-02-03T15:57:46Z")
Just about any movie shot in **Prague**. The latest one was **XXX**. That assasin trying to shoot him in the restaurant scene…sheesh…He’s running away and every other splice is from a different part of the city. ---
**Author:** ![Neidhart](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Neidhart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neidhart)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2003, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/91 "2003-02-03T16:40:13Z")
originally posted by **Wumpus** > [@](#): > > I also recall an X-Files where a scene was supposedly set in Minnesota in the dead of night on Halloween … and yet you could hear crickets chirping away loudly in the background. Guess it must have been an unseasonably warm fall that year, huh? IIRC, there are several episodes of _Picket Fences_ (set in Rome, Wisconsin) in which chirping crickets can be heard - with **snow** on the ground! (At least, it’s supposed to be snow; it looks more like that white stuff you see in department-store Christmas displays.) Obviously nobody involved with the show has ever lived north of Burbank, and are thus unclear on the concept of “winter”. Also you can never see anyone’s breath in outdoor scenes, but I guess that’s harder to fake. ---
**Author:** ![don\_willard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a88e57/32.png) [@don\_willard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_willard)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2003, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/92 "2003-02-04T20:50:21Z")
In the hilarious tv series MARRIED WITH CHILDREN there are several geography problems. It is supposed to be set in Chicago, but in one episode Bud and Al are driving through the city FROM A BEER FEST IN MILWAUKEE, and the lake shore is on their left. The only way the shore can be on your left when you’re next to Lake Michigan and in the downtown area is if you ARE DRIVING NORTH, and Chicago is SOUTH of Milwaukee! Another example of careless geography is there is a scene in Kankakee, which is a town south of Chicago, and there are hills in the background, but there are no hills in Kankakee! There is an inconsistency about Marcy the neighbor’s house. sometimes it seems like it is next door, but in other episodes it is across the street. For instance the family is peering through the peephole in their front door to Marcy’s house across the street in one episode, but in another Marcy’s is next door to Al’s–there is a fence between their backyards and they are seen on either side of it. ---
**Author:** ![Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_News_Baboon)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2003, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/93 "2003-02-04T22:17:35Z")
We lived in San Francisco when Eddie Murphy’s **The Metro** was filmed. A) Cable Cars do not travel on Jones Street. B) The scene in the cable car shows it, the car, careening down Jones for at least five minutes. If you look in the background, you will see the same buildings over and overand over. Behold the magic of the loop. ---
**Author:** ![Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/5fc32e/32.png) [@Bad\_News\_Baboon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bad_News_Baboon)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2003, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/94 "2003-02-04T22:18:47Z")
also, I seem to recall that **party of five** took a lot of liberties with geography, too. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2003, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/95 "2003-03-07T04:50:57Z")
This wasn’t a movie, put a Red Cross radio PSA: [Howling winds are blowing, the voiceover says:] _Hurricane Hugo is about to strike the Florida coast._ Hugo hit South Carolina. ---
**Author:** ![Governor\_Quinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/d26b3c/32.png) [@Governor\_Quinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Governor_Quinn)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2003, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/96 "2003-03-07T14:03:18Z")
In John Wayne’s “The Alamo”, the Alamo seems to be far from San Antonio, when, in reality, it was only a couple of miles away, still within the range of sight. ---
**Author:** ![the\_O-man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9f8e36/32.png) [@the\_O-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_O-man)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2003, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/97 "2003-03-07T16:17:13Z")
Not exactly geography, and not a movie, but in the cable show _Curb Your Enthusiasm,_ Larry David has inside information on an upcoming terrorist attack in Los Angeles. He advises friends to get away from the city, and Palm Springs is mentioned as a destination. The friends ask where they should stay, and Larry mentions that he always stays at the Four Seasons Hotel. Very ritzy and beautiful, but has never been in the Palm Springs area! :smack: Palm Beach, Florida, but not Palm Springs, CA. Then again, they may have purposely used the name of a famous hotel that is not in this desert for legal or other reasons. Perhaps to avoid gratuitous advertising. But it certainly got my attention. ---
**Author:** ![Umbriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/9de053/32.png) [@Umbriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Umbriel)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2003, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/98 "2003-03-07T21:15:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CalMeacham \* > \*\*Oh, yeah – one of our favorites. In **The Adventures of Buackaroo Banzai** , Yoyodyne Corporation is supposed set in Grover’s Mill, N.J. (where Orson Welles’ Martians landed). **Pepper Mill** grew up in Grover’s Mill – it’s nowhere as big as depicted in the movie. And there aren’t any palm trees there, either. It’s in _New Jersey_, fer cryin’ out loud! That’s what you get when California filmmakers base their impressions of defense contractors on L.A. factories. \*\* I thought most of the geography in **Buckaroo Banzai** was intentionally skewed with humorous intent. Wasn’t it implied that the salt flats where Buckaroo tested the Overthruster were also in New Jersey? In the recent remake of **Godzilla** , the depths of the Hudson and the East River are grossly exaggerated. I don’t think even the navigable channels are more than 40 feet deep or so, which would barely come up to the monster’s ankles. Not only does Godzilla sneak up to the city completely submerged in the East River, but there are shots of the monster alongside ballistic missile subs battling below the surface of the Hudson, in water deeper than the subs’ length (over 500’). And nevermind the block after block of city streets lined on both sides with 50+ story skyscrapers… In the first season X-Files episode “The Jersey Devil” one of the feral humanoids wanders unnoticed from its usual stomping grounds in the pine barrens (which are, for some reason, as rugged as the back country of the Pacific Northwest, instead of flat and sandy) into Atlantic City. This shouldn’t be possible without strolling over a busy causeway, or swimming across a bay, inasmuch as AC lies on a coastal barrier island. In a later episode, “Home” it’s stated that it would take all day to get police backup to reach Home, PA, from Pittsburgh. Bureaucratic issues aside, Mapquest estimates the trip as about 1 hour and 20 minutes. State or county police backup would probably have been obtainable much closer. Rural isolation just isn’t what it used to be… ---
**Author:** ![shelbo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/3d9bf3/32.png) [@shelbo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shelbo)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2003, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/99 "2003-03-07T21:38:41Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Dooku \* > \*\*[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]\*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? \*\* Well, according to at least [one site on the internet](http://www.nitpickers.com/movies/nitpicks/39000/38123.shtml), at the time it was filmed, the top level of the Bay Bridge was for 2-way car traffic, and the bottom for trains. I was aware that that had been the set up, but am not sure of the date the switch to the current configuation was made. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [March 7, 2003, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379/100 "2003-03-07T22:12:20Z")
I lived in Montgomery, AL for many years. TNT did a miniseries on the life of GEORGE WALLACE and filmed it in a city in Canada (Canada, Alabama, both have heaps of A’s), so Montgomery’s downtown is suddenly about five times larger and has highrises. Last year, Angela Bassett starred in The Rosa Parks Story and decided to film on location for realism. Unfortunately the building the real Rosa Parks was arrested in front of was razed a few years ago in order to build the Rosa Parks Library and Museum and most of the old buildings in downtown Montgomery were torn down to make way for much larger buildings in the 1980s/1990s, so most of her Montgomery scenes ended up being filmed in Wetumpka, a town of about 3,000 with absolutely no similariites to Montgomery about 20 miles south. (Wetumpka was also the place where “GRASS HARP”, a movie starring Matthau/Lemmon/Spacek/Piper/Furlong was filmed.) A friend of mine who grew up in Minnesota grimaces everytime LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE is shown. “Where are these damned mountains supposed to be? What’s with all the scrub brush? Why are there no Scandinavian accents? Why did it only snow once in 10 years?” A colleague who grew up in Milwaukee in the 1950s has a similar reaction to GOOD TIMES. “It’s never snowing and there are no Eastern European surnames… I was grown before I knew Italians in Milwaukee, and the ones I knew were all well-to-do and not working class… and why do Laverne and Fonzie have Brooklyn accents?” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-errors-in-geography-from-movies-set-in-your-city/151379.md?page=6)