Say I’m coming to where you live for a holiday. Can you point out some exact spots from movies so that I can take photos of them?
What brought this on was rewatching Edward Norton in 25th Hour. It occurred to me that a New Yorker could point me to the exact seat he sits on while gazing at the river, or the underpass in the park froma later scene. Similarly in Analyse That at the end the characters are standing at a spot someone should be able to pinpoint.
Well I’d like lots of these exact spots. Just tell me where it is, what movie it’s in and what scene. Then I can plan my tour.
The Union League is at 140 S. Broad in Philadelphia, right outside of City Hall. It “stars” as the “Heritage Club” in Trading Places (the outside of it did, anyway). There’s lots of Philly spots in that film, if you’re interested.
Philadephia’s City Hall (you can see it from the Union League) has also been in lots of other films, for that matter (Twelve Monkeys, for example).
The Philadelphia Art Museum is at 26th and the Parkway, and a Rocky-like dash up the stairs is required for cinema/locale junkies.
There’s also a 3-block stretch of Ridge Avenue in the Roxborough section of the city that served as the setting for a couple of scenes in a movie–Stealing Home was the name of that masterpiece, if I remember correctly. Peck Miller’s taproom and Bob’s Diner were the places in question, unless I misremember, all of it contained between Lyceum Avenue and Green Lane on the Ridge.
I don’t know if this is what you were looking for, and I can’t tell you exact scenes. So if this doesn’t help, I demand the last two minutes of my life back.
Here, in the Niagara Region, dozens of major Hollywood productions have been shot so I’ll only pick a few of the highlights:
In the Stephen King adaptation, The Dead Zone, I can take you to the tunnel where Christopher Walken finds the killer’s cigarette pack. The place is called the Screaming Tunnels and is supposedly haunted by the ghosts of two children who died there after running ablaze from their burning house across the street. Folklore has it that on some nights, you can still hear their screaming. The was a perfect piece of location scouting on behalf the movie’s producers.
In the same movie, I could take you to the gazebo where one of the murders ocurred. It was built specifically for the movie but it remains a centrepiece of the Niagara-on-the-Lake town park.
Speaking of Niagara-on-the-Lake, it seems that this town (the oldest in Upper Canada) has played stand in for dozens of American movie small towns. Examples include The Ref starring Dennis Leary and Trapped in Paradise starring Nicholas Cage.
Oh, and the big waterfall-type thingy in Niagara? I could probably take you there, too.
If you are hoping to go see the house from Animal House, you are out of luck. The local hospital (Sacred Wallet) tore it down several years back and put up a clinic of some sort. It was in Eugene, Oregon. But other places in the movie are still there…just walk around the University of Oregon campus. Go to the Erb Memorial Union and you’ll see the “Fish Bowl”, where the infamous food fight happened.
I could also take you to the apartment complex that was used in Singles, as well as the house that Kira Sedewick’s character lived in (she had parking!) Sorry, can’t pinpoint street names, but I could drive to there.
There are several books out now about this-they focus on Hollywood & Calif, but I’m sure there are books that discuss all areas. I don’t live too far from where the Lone Ranger rode every week- the rocks are there, but the Simi Valley (Reagan) Fwy cuts right through. In a way I don’t want to see.
Scenes from Night of the Living Dead were filmed in Evans City, PA in the cemetary where a lot of my relatives are buried.
Philly is a great place to find the exact places from films. When they were filming 12 Monkeys, everyday my bus went right through the “sets”. “Philadelphia” scenes were filmed right down the street from me in Lower Merion Twp.
And I’ve even driven past some of the spots made famous when “COPS” was in Philly!
Not a joke, but if you deviate a little (to the Gulf of Mexico, go figure). I can show where some scenes of Collateral Damage were filmed, pretending it was Colombia.
DC is fertile pickings for movie buffs. Drive in from Rosslyn on the Key Bridge, and you’ll see the “Exorcist Stairs” in Georgetown, the one where theat head bounced all the way down to M Street. The new obligatory shot for DC-based films is Adams-Morgan, specifically 17th Street just below Columbia. You can see the big mural of a Toulouse-Lautrec poster over Lautrec’s Restaurant (In the Line of Fire, Enemy of the State). Cross the street, you’ll see Idle Time Books where Tom Cruise (in A Few Good Men) swapped witty sayings with a crusty old newsie (which, incidentally, we don’t have in DC; Idle Time sells all its stuff inside, and last time I was in there, they didn’t sell magazines). And all the monuments, of course…
