Ever Been to a Movie Location?

Saw a discussion similar to this on IMDb and thought it would make an interesting topic here. Have you ever visited a location/site you'd seen in a movie? I got a couple.

Dunno how many of you have seen the indie drama The Station Agent from a few years back, but I drive past the train station they used in that film every day on my way to and from work. It was once a actual train stop for NJ Transit but it hasn't been used for a number of years It's right off Rt. 23 in Newfoundland, NJ. There are two old cabooses and a passenger car from a defunct railroad on the property (also seen in the film) sitting on side rails as well. My older son was way into trains when he was little so we used to drive over there and just look at the train cars every once in a while. One time while we were walking around we met the caretakers for the property, who gave my son and I a tour of the station building and the train cars. My son was in his glory and I gotta admit it was pretty neat too.

Going way back, Troma Studios shot some scenes for Class of Nuke'Em High in the parking lot of a local Catholic high school when I was a teenager. My friends and I saw a flyer in our local comic book store saying "EXTRAS NEEDED! Be in a Movie!" so we went there, hung out and watched for a while, till my buddies got bored and wanted to leave. For all I know I might be in the crowd scene in the movie but I've only seen the film once and wasn't able to find myself. Betcha they used a take from after my lame-o friends wanted to bail.

Similarly, when I was in college my friend Sean and I were record shopping in Manhattan one night and we literally stumbled into a shoot for Ghostbusters 2. They were filming in front of the Museum of Modern Art for the scene towards the end of the movie, when the building is all covered in evil slime. (Venkman: "Come on guys, there's always room for Jell-O!") Again, we hung out, froze our asses off (it was late Fall) and watched them shoot what felt like dozens of takes, we were there for a couple of hours. When the movie came out, I was sure I'd be able to see "my" debut but when the scene came up there were literally hundreds of people in the background (it sure looked like a lot more onscreen than when I was there in person! Haha.), and I didn't see me or Sean anywhere. My brother leaned over to me and said "So where are you?" and I sez "Ehhh, I'm in that mess someplace."

Now that I think about it I have a connection to the first Ghostbusters as well -- when I was a freshman in high school the staff of our school newspaper went to Columbia University in NYC for some kind of regional high-school newspaper meeting of the minds/award ceremony with kids from schools all over the NY/NJ area. As I was walking around the campus that day I kept wondering why the place seemed so damn familiar because I was sure I'd never been before. About halfway thru the day it finally dawned on me that some of the early scenes in the first "Ghostbusters" were shot there.

yeah actually I have been to the goonies house in astoria oregon when I was a little kid sometime in the early/mid 90's. Pretty cool..haha. Even had that ice chest outside.

Oh yeah. I've been to the Monroeville Mall countless times. It was the location for the original Dawn Of The Dead.Of course the mall has changed drastically since it was filmed but there is a cool Zombie based museum in the back of a toy store (vintage posters,mannequins,and the like).

007 wrote:

Oh yeah. I've been to the Monroeville Mall countless times. It was the location for the original Dawn Of The Dead.Of course the mall has changed drastically since it was filmed but there is a cool Zombie based museum in the back of a toy store (vintage posters,mannequins,and the like).

I was totally expecting you to say that you've been to a James Bond movie set.

That Jackie Chan movie "The Spy Next Door" was filmed 100 yards away from my high school.

I've seen the Amityville Horror House. I don't live too far from there. I actually go to a music store thats in the area haha. Not too far from where my band practices, is the place where they filmed the Cosby Show. Not really a movie scene but I've seen some of the trees Billy Joel has hit in various places on long island lol. I'm sure theres more I just can't think at the moment.

Phoenix Reign Drummer wrote:

I've seen the Amityville Horror House. I don't live too far from there.

I've been to the house as well.

I seem to move to cities where they film movies. When I was in Seattle there was always some cool location shoots going on. When I was in college, they were filming a car chase for that movie "Assassins" with Sly Stallone one the street down the hill from the school. There were probably 100 people out there watching them do take after take of this bus/car stunt...pretty damn cool.

When I lived in Arlington Va, they were filming a TV series in my neighborhood (never found out which one), lots of cop car chases and various other second unit stuff...screwed up traffic even worse for a couple weeks.

Austin is also a big movie town. I watched them film a scene from that Ellen Page movie Whip It over on Congress blvd one afternoon, she's even more cute in real life.

I missed the Machete shoot however.

Joe wrote:

007 wrote:

Oh yeah. I've been to the Monroeville Mall countless times. It was the location for the original Dawn Of The Dead.Of course the mall has changed drastically since it was filmed but there is a cool Zombie based museum in the back of a toy store (vintage posters,mannequins,and the like).

I was totally expecting you to say that you've been to a James Bond movie set.

Ha ! If only. Those things are always made at exotic locales and I've never been to any of them (although Vegas and Miami are always possible).

I was in Major League They filmed it at Camden Yards and if you do a really slow screen you can see my elbow and my friends arm and shoulder.

exact33 wrote:

I was in Major League They filmed it at Camden Yards and if you do a really slow screen you can see my elbow and my friends arm and shoulder.

I was just talking to my friend yesterday about that movie!! What a classic! That's pretty cool!


I've been to a good amount of places as I live close to San Francisco and there were plenty movies shot there. Alcatraz Island, Golden Gate Bridge, Presidio, etc. The freeway seen in the Matrix 2 was shot in Oakland. While I wasn't in it, I saw some of the filming.

Awesome thread! What a great idea for a thread. All the above are cool.

Off the top of my head:

I was in Toronto in 98 and walked through the set of Dick.

Years ago my buddy and I used to do these "day's of nothing" when, on a day close to going back to college and going our seperate ways, we'd randomly start driving. No map, not destination...just drive. Well, the one year, on the way, we ended up in the cemetery in Pennsylvania where Night of the Living Dead's opening scene was shot.

Finally...and this one is by far my favorite - and actually encompasses at least two movies...last year my wife and I were in the UK and one of the things we did was take a tour that ended up at Stonehenge (I site in of itself) and one of the stops was a village named Lacock. It's a village that has quite a few scenes in the Harry Potter movies. The coolest part I just found out the other week. I just watched the new Wolfman movie and there's this scene in an "ice house/morgue" that just seemed so darned familiar to me. It seemed improbable, but I did some research and sure enough the morgue was this 600-700 year old barn in Lacock that my wfie and I had been in. So cool.


The barn


A bit of the village


Other obvious places that millions of people happen to share in major cities.

I live in Philadelphia, so running up the steps of the Art Museum and jumping up & down like Rocky is a requirement for all residents.

I don't think it's there anymore, but I used to work downtown with my dad when I was young and we'd drive past Mickey's Gym from the 'Rocky' movies too, delivering home heating oil.

Not a movie set per-say, but many moons ago, my friends and I stood in the same alley way that Cinderella shot for the cover of Night Songs, making our best pouty/sexy faces.

I also grew up a few blocks from the now-closed Holmesburg Prison which has been used in a few movies. Al Capone did some time there too.

My dad met John Travolta years ago when he was filming the movie Blow Out. Some great shots of the city in that one. Cool movie too.

I've pretty much (unintentionally) been to every exterior scene of 'The Sixth Sense' and just recently, I was downtown in a section called Olde City. The other night, I watched a movie called 'The Answer Man' with Jeff Daniels and he walks the same street I did, right past The Continental Cocktail Lounge.

I work in the local sports arena which has been used in a few films too. Philly gets allot more movie work than you'd think.

Cool stories, all! Keep 'em coming!

Here's some pix I've taken of the trains seen in the film "The Station Agent" that I mentioned in my first post. The lil' guy is my train-crazy son Matthew, learning the fine points of trespassing on private property at an early age.

Awesome train pictures! I was a train nut as a kid.

I've also been to a Western set north of Billings Montana, it was originally built for the Cruise/Kidman movie Far & Away, but has been kept up and has been used in many films since. It's mostly full size buildings and is a local tourist attraction when not in use.

Parts of Coal Miner's Daughter were shot in my county. In a bar scene in the movie, my uncle and a couple of cousins were used as extras. One boy who was in the movie went to school with me.

Cool pics FF!

detuned wrote:

Awesome train pictures! I was a train nut as a kid.

scottmitchell74 wrote:

Cool pics FF!

Thanx fellers! Yea, it really is an interesting site. Dunno if either of you have ever seen "The Station Agent," but it's a tremendously depressing little film about an alcoholic dwarf looking for love, haha. I happened on it one day on IFC or Sundance Channel and even called out to my son "Hey, look, man, it's your trains!"

The day my son and I got the "grand tour" from the property's caretakers they filled us in on the history of the place -- the "station" was once a regular stop for NJ Transit trains, but over the years it became discontinued. The three train cars there are leftovers from a defunct "Scenic Train Ride through the Mountains" tourist thing that went out of business in the late 70s. The steam engine they used is now in a railway museum somewhere, but for whatever reason the cars were left behind to rot away on the sidings.

The station building itself was actually being used as a private home for a while (!) after the movie was shot -- they took us inside and there's a little kitchenette and a washer/dryer tucked into one corner, it's a tiny little place, about the size of a dorm room. Nobody was living in it at the time we visited though. As I said, I drive by it every day on my way to and from work and to the best of my knowledge nobody's used it for quite awhile.

Quote :

Dunno if either of you have ever seen "The Station Agent," but it's a tremendously depressing little film about an alcoholic dwarf looking for love, haha.

Depressing? Alcoholic dwarf? I'm getting all hot & bothered just thinking about it. I should, nay, MUST see this movie, STAT!!

Philly's City Hall was featured pretty promenently in 12 Monkeys. And I believe the scenes where Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt are institutionalized were filmed in the Eastern State Penitentiary, which is another closed down prison in West Philadelphia that gets turned into a haunted house every October. Al Capone did some time there too.

http://www.easternstate.org/

My mom and I were at the filming of the movie "Rainman" as extras. She is in the Amtrak station scene at the very end reading a paper.

My uncle used to live in New Orleans so we'd get to see all the French Quarter locations they always use in movies. Of course, in movies the geography is usually totally messed up. In Hard Target there's a scene of Van Damme riding a motorcycle on one street, then he rounds a corner and it cuts to him driving on another street all the way across town.

My stepfather was an extra in Tin Cup because they filmed the U.S. Open scenes in Houston and he's a golfing fanatic. You can see him on camera in a couple of scenes - pretty funny to us.

I like watching that old Dolph Lundgren movie, I Come in Peace, because aside from being a fun movie, they filmed it around Houston and we got to see all the places we've been in the film. This is probably old hat for people in New York or L.A. but they don't film very often in Houston

Same with Robocop 2 - through the magic of matte paintings they turned the George R. Brown Convention Center into a towering skycraper, which was pretty hilarious for residents.

detuned wrote:

Austin is also a big movie town. I watched them film a scene from that Ellen Page movie Whip It over on Congress blvd one afternoon, she's even more cute in real life.

In Richard Linklater's Slacker, there's a scene of a guy following another guy, talking his ear off about conspiracy theories. They start on Guadalupe, I think, then cut back into a suburban neighborhood. They stopped almost directly in front of the off-campus housing I used to live in (The Madison).

I remember MTV also filming an Austin-based tv show called Austin Stories, IIRC, around town when I was there. I heard stories that the production was troubled because apparently the crew, used to the size and pace of Los Angeles, basically exhausted all of Austin's bar scene and activities in less than a couple of weeks and they got in a really foul mood when they realized that Austin is after all only a small city. They were bored out of their skulls and started giving the locals a lot of crap over it.

MetalGuy71 wrote:

Quote :

Dunno if either of you have ever seen "The Station Agent," but it's a tremendously depressing little film about an alcoholic dwarf looking for love, haha.

Depressing? Alcoholic dwarf? I'm getting all hot & bothered just thinking about it. I should, nay, MUST see this movie, STAT!!

Here's the plot synopsis from IMDb:
"When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss."

...sounds like a laugh riot doesn't it? Seriously, it was pretty excruciating. I did watch the entire film just because I was getting such a kick out of seeing so much "local color" in the movie but if it hadn't been filmed in my town, I probably wouldn't have bothered with it at all.

If weepy melodrama is your thang, though, have at it. It's got a pretty high rating on IMDb, for whatever that's worth.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0340377/

Phoenix Reign Drummer wrote:

I've seen the Amityville Horror House.

I've driven past the "fake" Amityville house that was used in the first movie (the owners of the real one didn't allow the filmmakers to shoot there), it's in Toms River, NJ.

Quote :

Here's the plot synopsis from IMDb:
"When his only friend dies, a man born with dwarfism moves to rural New Jersey to live a life of solitude, only to meet a chatty hot dog vendor and a woman dealing with her own personal loss."

It's like someone filmed my very life. Except for the dwarfism, NJ residency, living in solitude and chatty hot dog vendors. It's like looking into a mirror.

I love depressing movies. It's just one of my many, many character flaws.

I cant say for sure but id have to guess so for Mystic Pizza was shot mostly in Mystic, CT and Ive been all over that town