NYC As Everywhere

New York City as Ohio? The NY Times says it's so, as film productions take advantage of the city's new tax breaks to encourage production money come to the Big Apple. Freelance location scout Mark Bodnar ran down how the city can be transformed into almost anywhere:

For the rural South? "I'd head to Rockaway Beach and all those great abandoned Army barracks there."

For farmland? Floyd Bennett Field, in Brooklyn.

For the desert? A marble-and-tile quarry on Staten Island.

And, of course, there's Brooklyn, where his scouting company, Where'bouts, is based. "Brooklyn can cheat as anywhere in America," Mr. Bodnar said. "Just south of Prospect Park, people have yards, big backyards, Victorian houses. It's suburban. It's a neighborhood. It could be anywhere."

Gothamist also got a kick out of learning that Martin Scorsese decided to shoot in New York for the set-in-Boston The Departed (which is a remake of the awesome Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs) when he was in Beacon Hill, telling his location scout, "What the hell. This is Brooklyn Heights. Let's go." And it turns out that the crew of Spiderman 2 did want to film the subway showdown on NYC elevated tracks, but the MTA refused, hence the Chicago substitution.

What are some areas of the city that seem absolutely un-city like? The outer boroughs do, in some areas, take on that anonymity that befits suburban anywhere (especially with McMansions coming to Queens). Are there are any movies that have claimed to be set in NYC but are clearly not? And we don't mean the direct-to-video stuff. Gothamist is relieved now that movies set in NYC will have more of a chance to shoot in NYC, because ever since seeing the Muppets Take Manhattan, we've believed in authenticity; we spent most of New York Minute picking out the shot-in-Toronto scenes versus the New York ones.

Photograph of a swampy bit of Queens - the Broad Channel - by Jake Dobkin

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in Arts & Entertainment, News on July 25, 2005 1:13 PM

Comments [rss]

abby

Woody Allen's Radio Days was filmed in Rockaway Park around B114th-B116th Streets. Also a horrible movie with Jon Bon Jovi and Lauren Holly directed by Ed Burns called No Looking Back was filmed around B90th Street in Rockaway.

filmbuff

my favorite "you'd never know that it's actually filmed in nyc" film is jules et jim, which was really shot in williamsburg.

spinachdip

Oh, and the Boston scenes in the War of the Worlds were shot in Park Slope.

And while I don't know it has ever doubled as a non-NY location, the abandoned tracks at Hoyt-Schermerhorn are used to shoot pretty much every underground NY subway scene.

Tim N.

The Verdict was set almost entirely in Boston, but all those nice Boston homes are really in Brooklyn Heights, and the libraries where Paul Newman and James Mason work are at Fordham in the Bronx (I know, I watched them film!).

And, yes, I am old.

Peter Venkman

You know the opening scene in Ghostbusters when they're at the big New York Public Library? The interior shots were actually filmed in a different library—in Los Angeles.

King Hippo

For NYC as stand-in, I'd vote for "Hercules in New York" where the Central Park Conservatory Gardens serve as a poor approximation of Mount Olympus. I've never been to the home of the gods, but somehow I doubt that it would look like Central Park in the 70's.

sarah

How about LOST IN THE ALPS (1907, Edwin S. Porter, 8 minutes), shot partially in Central Park on a snowy day?

Bickle

Any restaurant or bar in this city feels unlike New York when you hear a bunch of whiny voices saying "LIKE" over and over and over and OVER again, between every other word. I close my eyes and it sounds just like California. Fucking nightmare.

spinachdip

"Rumble In the Bronx" is an obvious not-filmed-in-NY New York film, what with the mountains in the background.

As for un-NY places, I went to Whitestone once to help get my friend's car out of the impound lot. That place could be Anytown, USA.

King Hippo

fake nyc film of all time? Rumble in the Bronx

John

One jarring example of a movie shot in New York but set elsewhere was "Glengarry Glen Ross," which included several obvious shots of the Sheepshead Bay subway station and even the Empire State Building in one background and yet retained all of its Chicago dialogue references, like Kenilworth and Wisconsin. Weird.