Burt Reynolds can be blamed for a lot of things actually 
No big deal, I’ve never been to Atlanta (except maybe switching planes at the airport) but when your post tried to describe how the city looked on TV or in the movies I realized I had no mental image of the present day city at all (I never saw Sharky’s Machine or the Wayne Williams one).
10-4 on Burt’s contributions to American pop culture. I do think it was admirable of him to try to put Atlanta on the map by shooting Sharky’s Machine there, and for a number of years it was one of my favorite movies. All things tend to sour over time, or to become less hip, so even SM fell prey to that syndrome. I guess Bullitt is about the only thing I can think of (outside of Eastwood’s westerns) that haven’t faded with time for me.
I was amused by the comments about Bullitt and San Francisco, by the way.
And the inside of Tom’s Diner (that’s the real place at 110th) is nothing like Monk’s (which is much bigger and clearner-looking).
IIRC, they do have a Big Salad at Tom’s, though.
They constantly do it with Interstates in movies. Road movies often have people driving cross country on I-80 or I-70, which you can see on signs passing by outside the windows. But instead it is really a crappy little two lane road, that looks nothing like an Interstate.
Yeah I know, there is no way you could actually get them to shut down interstates for a controlled production, but it still annoys me.
Very true (although I don’t know whether or not they have a Big Salad). But as a nitpick, it’s actually called “Tom’s Restaurant”, despite the Suzanne Vega song.
And I totally agree with this website when they say: “The diner itself is just a greasy spoon and terribly overcrowded, the waitresses rude, and the coffee mediocre at best. When the weather’s cold, be sure not to hold the door open for any longer than necessary or the entire staff yells at you in unison. Once you do squeeze inside, you stand with a dozen other people in a space of about two square feet waiting for a table, just to sit in a mysteriously wet booth for an oily cheese omelette and some dry toast.”