Discuss: Seeing Your City in the Movies

I live in RI, so I've gotten to spot a small handful of movie scenes... I even saw Underdog filming, and that movie features prominent scenes from different spots in RI. Of course, RI is so small that I am familliar with most parts of the state, and any time we have any bit of attention, it gets a lot of news coverage here! Most notably, Underdog's final scene takes place inside our State House, where I have been many times. Dan in Real Life is one of my favorites, as well. The scene where he goes to the "Yumm's" restaurant to get his daughter was filmed at a local bakery that I live practically seconds from and the rest of the film was filmed near Newport. And of course Dumb and Dumber features our famous Big Blue Bug, a spot I've visited many times!

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I don't know why it is, but yeah, there is something special about knowing the place you are seeing on film. Public Enemies was shot all over Milwaukee and the surrounding areas. It'll be a heavy hitter for south-eastern Wisconsin on opening weekend, good reviews or not. There were a lot of extras cast from the area, too, so I imagine there'll be a lot of traffic from the "Hey! I know that guy!" camp as well.
I guess it all ties in to make you feel like you have some insider knowledge -- and everyone likes to feel that way sometimes.

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Your post reminds me of the theories of the influence of movies on a place in Walker Percy's novel The Moviegoer (1960). The main character Binx Bolling discusses a "phenomenon called . . . certification. Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in a neighborhood, the place is not certified for him. More than likely he will live there sadly and the emptiness which is inside him will expand until it evacuates the entire neighborhood. But if he sees a movie which shows his very neighborhood, it becomes possible for him to live, for a time at least, as a person who is Somewhere and not Anywhere." Does that sound accurate?

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Mine is the small town of Springfield, VT, and has never been featured in a movie, but it still gave myself and my neighbors a great thrill when we saw our town being voted on for the Simpsons Movie premiere. I was even excited to see an ex make something of a cameo in the short video. It was just as exciting as finding out we had won the contest. It might seem pitiful to some, but I think that's the closest we're going to come to being on the big screen.

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I'm from NC, so it was so weird seeing a foreign car sliding through the downtown streets of Charlotte (Who films in Charlotte?!). I don't know why it didn't make the news (They are always struggling to come up with news stories here), because it looks like they shut down 5-6 blocks to film the scenes needed for April Fool's Day (The '08 Remake): http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1018817

It was a pretty bad movie, but it was cool nonetheless to see those scenes, because I had no idea it was filmed here.

In answer to your question Eric, the streets did seem to match up... it's not like they had the budget for trick photography or anything, and they didn't bother covering up any of the business signage... that's one of the main reasons I noticed it was my town, I recognized all of the businesses the car was driving past.

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I haven't seen my town in movies, however, it's been mentioned a few times.

I live in Terre Haute Indiana. Steve Martin blew us up with a cheese bomb in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid ( and we'd just gotten a new library! :P)

And TH is mentioned twice in A Christmas Story, once by the Dad ( mispronouncing it as Terry Hut) and then by Shepard as Ralphie saying "The line stretch all the way back to Terre Haute."

Not Stellar stuff, but just a little fun bit of trivia. :)

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I live in Miami, FL, so obviously, there's been a lot of films shot here, but what makes me laugh is how glossy and beautiful the movies makes this town look. Watching Transporter 2 was especially amusing not just for the makeover the areas of Miami got for filming but for the number of local theater actors who figured prominently in the film.

What's more amusing is the use of the city on TV. USA's Burn Notice actually uses many locations around the city (and MANY local actors, especially Paul Tei, who plays Barry on the show and was also in Transporter 2). CSI:Miami, on the other hand, might as well be any other city but Miami. Specifically, I live in a suburb of Miami called Coral Gables. It's pretty funny that there have been more murders in Coral Gables on the show than there have been in real life.

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Not my home town but my mom's had alot of October Sky filmed in it and my brother was an extra in it.

They still have a building with Olga Coal Company paint over it and the town is Oliver Springs Tennessee. The building for the science fair is actually a building in Knoxville tennessee that is used for the Tennessee Valley Fair and I believe it's called the jacobs building. It's weird to see a place I've been in so many times changed around but still recognizing the views formt he camera.

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"Maybe you're immune to it if you live in New York"

Well it depends. A lot of times things are SET in New York but shot in Toronto or somewhere else, which is annoying. Then there are the films shot here but that don't reflect the reality of the geography, subways, etc. So actually it can be kind of frustrating, but of course I love when movies are set/filmed in NYC, those movies automatically get extra points from me.

They filmed one of the fantasy sequences from Romance and Cigarettes just down the block from where I lived in Brooklyn. We lived on a pretty desolate, industrial block, and we sat on our front stairs two nights running to watch them shoot. The first night we even crept closer to get a better look at everyone.

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Hollywood movies shot in Toronto typically use the city as a stand-in for another U.S. city-- typically New York or Chicago. So watching these movies that show a building or street I walk by every morning, is a big distraction.

It is also distracting when a character in a movie walks down a familiar street in downtown Toronto and then turns the corner into a completely different street.

The last Blade film had the biggest of such distractions where a character was filmed on a street in Toronto and in the next scene they were in Vancouver (a city which I didn't recognize but someone else pointed out in the theater, in the middle of the movie).

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Im a portland filmmaker and avid portland geek, yeah this city has been used and abused in filmmaking. The worst was tommy Lee Jones The Hunted ( the Lambert starring one is way better movie). I shadowed the DP on. The hawthorne bridge sequence that doesn't have light rail in real life and in the movie takes three minutes to get to half way across the bridge. Wow horrible. When I worked on the Portland filmed Untraceable they hung background on the FBI set that was a shot of south portland but the exterior was the Conway building in North Portland.

Hopefully Wendy and Lucy break the Oregon curse. No movie had done well here with out children in it since Paint Your Wagon in the 70's.

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they actually shot the opening of transformers 2 in my hometown last year. It was a huge deal with all kinds of helicopters flying overhead, and they lit up the Bethlehem Steel's gargantuan steel stacks for it. here's the thing though... the apparently shot it to look like it was somewhere in china or japan, so i'm not sure if that counts. should be cool to see when it comes out though, as long as it's better than the first one.

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Even though I'm from Los Angeles, I was born and raised in the Valley, north of LA. Whenever I see the Valley in movies / TV (or specifically the city of Reseda where I grew up), I go freaking nuts! PTA does a lot of stuff in the Valley, and there are like four locations in Magnolia shot blocks from my then home. It makes me giddy like a little kid, haha.

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While people shit all over his films, I appreciate Tyler Perry because he shows all the different sides of Atlanta in his movies. It's great that you literally see a different part of the city in each of his films, and you really see how diverse Atlanta is.

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I'm from Louisiana, many movies are being filmed here now due to many State Tax Incentives, the scenes of his father's house on Lake Ponchartrain in the "Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was filmed very close to my house, i remember seeing Corrugated Plastic Signs up in early 2007 that said "CCBB" pointing toward the location. That movie especially gave me a thrill because the scenes were so effectively woven into the story...

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It's fascinating that you mention this now. I just saw 'Gran Torino' which was made around the Detroit area where I grew up, and it certainly gives the movie an interesting flavor. For starters, Clint Eastwood's character is a lot like many people you would meet from the area...tough and grouchy and casually racist. I saw this movie and thought..."I know this guy".

Secondly it sort of warps your perception of the movie a little bit in that it almost feels like a documentary, which I know it's not of course. But you see these places you either recognize or are surely from the area and it lends this authenticity about it.

The mind blower this year will be when Drew Barrymore's roller derby movie 'Whip It' comes out. I have a lot of friends in the roller derby scene and seeing them on screen, and in Detroit area locations will be completely surreal.

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