August 16, 2007
The D.C. Movie Mistakes Continue (Updated)
Can't anyone get D.C. right?
Today the Post's Reliable Source reports that Nicole Kidman's newest thriller, The Invasion, makes a number of relatively amateur mistakes in trying to use the District as a backdrop, even though a good part of it was filmed here. Among those:
- Kidman, who plays a D.C. psychiatrist, buys magazines at one of those big sidewalk newsstand kiosks -- the ones all over New York but not on any corner in this town.Obviously, the movie is supposed to be fiction, so a few creative additions here and there are permissible. And other than detail-obsessed District residents like ourselves, who else will actually notice or care? But after watching the summer blockbuster Live Free or Die Hard and its painful distortions of the District -- including numerous skyscrapers, toll booths in D.C. tunnels and the Los Angeles Central Library and Aon Center in the background -- we can't help but wonder why our fair city is continually being misrepresented in movies. Why, for another example, does Aaron Sorkin insist you need to go through Dupont Circle to get from Capitol Hill to the White House in The American President? And there are so many more examples to choose from -- Enemy of the State, Spy Games, St. Elmo's Fire and The Exorcist, to name a few -- but where else has the District's geography and look been sacrificed for entertainment? Perhaps we'll send your answers on to the producers of the next big blockbuster that will be filmed and set in the District, State of Play -- which incidentally stars Brad Pitt and is set to begin shooting in late fall.- Her fabulous downtown office window looks out on a bunch of skyscrapers.
- While escaping her alien ex-husband, she runs past a Walgreens drugstore in Cleveland Park. Not there.
- On the Metro, the announcer says, "The subway doors are now closing." Subway?
- To get from Georgetown to Cleveland Park, she drives through a tunnel. Seems like the long route. Oh, it's also rush hour and there's no traffic. In our dreams.
Update: This is apparently an issue of enough importance that both FreeRide and the City Paper are giving it coverage. Now we can all collectively admit it's a slow news day.
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And Helen Mirren. But you didn't hear that from me.
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There was an X Files episode where Sculley went to DC's Chinatown, which was full of opium dens, rickshaws, and Chinese.
A recent episode of Bones had David Boreanaz running through a Mount Pleasant in DC where the streets were lined with palm trees.
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As a reverse answer to your question, "Breach" actually portrayed the city very accurately, and worked in enough specific details to give it definition. The traffic scene, and the Ryan Phillippe/Laura Linney scene at the Archives metro, were particularly good. Also, they made all the CIA offices look very drab and unglamorous.
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Two of my favorites are the oft-discussed Georgetown Metro station chase in "No Way Out," and a similarly silly chase in "The Jackal" (the Bruce Willis remake of "Day of the Jackal"), in which Richard Gere chases Willis through the Metro tunnels by foot and it takes all of 2 minutes to get from Metro Center to Capitol Heights. Apparently it was actually filmed in the Montreal subway.
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while watching 24, an "anacostia holding facility" was used as a backdrop. i'm pretty sure palm trees were featured here as well.
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while we all want to our District to be shed in an accurate light, who really cares if those mistakes are made, I guess I mean to say..., why should we care?
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How about in "Along Came A Spider"? If my memory serves me correctly, Morgan Freeman ran from the Lincoln Memorial to Union Station in some ubsurd time - like under 2 minutes. Then, after getting on the Metro he quickly ended up outside on a train that was anything but a Metro train. A friend told me it looked like a train he'd seen in Atlanta.
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she could have been taking rock creek park to beach drive, then adams mill rd to porter st to get to cleveland park. there's a tunnel on beach drive. if connecticut is backed up, this is probably faster than getting off rcp in adams morgan.
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Hollywood studios don't show the district in an "accurate light" because for the most part they only come into town for a week or so to do pickup shots (ie, someone walking down Pennsylvania Avenue, a conversation in front of the White house, etc) usually with a second unit director. This is all thanks to the cost of living making filming too expensive and the vast complexities that it would take to close roads, bridges, etc.
And my favorite is that Morgan Freeman movie where he runs into the "Union Station Metro" and somehow ends up on the metro in LA. Classic.
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if Brad Pitt is going to be filming a movie here, that probably means that Angelina and their brood will be around DC. Should make for some fun sightings.
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What about True Lies when Arnold busts through the window of the Georgetown shopping mall (people shop there??!) and onto a busy flat street clearly nowhere near Georgetown and then rides a horse into a really tall building...
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"The Man with One Red Shoe" (Classic District Movie)
In the scene where Tom Hanks' character is biking to the dentist appointment, he is seen biking along the C&O Canal in Maryland but once he is entering D.C. he is shown entering from Virginia which is not possible.
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Frankly I'm glad they don't film much here. Film crews are incredibly annoying. When I see one, I make it a point to walk through the scene, notwithstanding the 18 year old PA's admonitions.
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guest #9. I didn't see the movie, but if Freeman was "running" then there is your answer right there. D.C. Metro will not allow filming of any kind that involves chasing, running, violence, or passing on the left.
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http://www.kittytours.org/dcmovies/index.html
Here's a pretty good list of movies filmed in or around DC, including locations. But it doesn't point out the flaws.
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There is a scene early on in the film In the Line of Fire where Clint Eastwood tracks John Malkovich to an apartment at 3155 Mount Pleasant Street. Incredibly, this is an actual address, and happens to be the building that houses Tonic and Radius Pizza. Of course the film's exterior establishing shot depicts a different building entirely, but-- again, incredibly-- the interior shots of the hallway are of the actual building.
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On a minor note, there will be a Walgreens soon in Cleveland Park where Yenching Palace is now. Maybe they caught wind and wanted a shameless plug. #8 is correct about the tunnel, I live on the corner of Conn. and Porter and use that route everytime to go to G'town by gettin off at the Pst. exit(closed) or Pennsylvania ave. exit.
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How about mission impossible 3? One second they're on a bridge spanning countless miles of water, then the attack happens that frees the bad guy, and then tom cruise hops in a car, turns around and the next thing we know he's crossing I-66 towards E St. I found that fairly amusing.
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I seem to recall several inaccuracies in Breach. The Federal Triangle metro stop was passed off as Archives (when they first exit the metro, then there is a cut and they are clearly at the Navy Memorial). Also, when they were stuck in traffic, I don't think you would ever take the route they took to get back to the FBI from where they were.
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The best scenes I love are how any trip through dc seems to require an inexplicable out-of-the-way trip across the memorial bridge.
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Details, details, details ...
It's "Spy Game" not "Spy Games". Spy Game spent precious little time in DC, so it didn't have much to get wrong, except, I think, for Redford speeding the wrong direction on the Memorial bridge to get to CIA (heading inbound to DC instead of outbound).
"Breach" featured a dramatized FBI office space, not CIA.
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Breach was pretty good, except that part when he comes up the Archives metro into the middle of Federal Triangle.
But the reason this stuff happens is because they don't care. They want to make the most visually impressive movie on the cheapest budget they can, continuity be damned. DC gets tragically victimized over and over again in the process. Did anyone see the new Die Hard movie? That was the absolute worst!
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Not that it excuses some of the wilder interpretations, but it is famously difficult to get all the permits necessary to film in D.C., which has to do with the D.C. film office. Lots of productions do limited shooting in the District to get enough to carry the shots made in VA or MD or elsewhere to get away from the hassle.
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Don't forget the scene in "True Lies" where Arnold rides a horse from Georgetown and winds up going across the Mall and then loses the bad guy who jumps a motorcycle from the roof of a hotel (I think it's supposed to be the JW Marriott) into a rooftop pool across the street.
Or in Enemy of the State when the guy from My Name is Earl runs through Chef Ike's Mambo room right into Dupont Circle before getting hit by a firetruck.
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Oh, and then there was the scene in...
...blah blah blah.
Nicole Kidman is friggin' stunning. That Australian country-singer dope-addict munchkin she married is one lucky bastard.
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The book 40 Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson has a quite accurate (and obsessively detailed) grasp of District and suburb geography. It's also really good, so you should definitely pick it up the next time you hit a bookstore.
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oh my god! Brad Pitt will be in town? I better go to the gym!!
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One thing I wish actually existed was that excellent flower market they set up in the front arcade of Union Station in Wedding Crashers.
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Or read anything by Pelicanos - now that's the real DC.
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Or in Enemy of the State when the guy from My Name is Earl runs through Chef Ike's Mambo room right into Dupont Circle before getting hit by a firetruck
I also liked how they called it "Captain Ike's" in the movie.
Another one is "Wedding Crashers." I think they show them driving back into DC across the Potomac after leaving the church, which is in Dupont Circle.
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How about "National Treasure" where they have a chase scene up 7th Street NW in Penn Quarter. As a PQ resident, I know for a fact that it is congested almost 24/7.
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Least Accurate Thread Ever
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Let's not overlook accuracy in St. Elmo's Fire's prescient look at Georgetown douchbaggery in its formative pre-LNS years.
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Innacuracy on purpose -- the FBI's Hoover Building standing in for the lobbyist headquarters in "Thank you for Smoking." Hilarious.
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Of course Mike Grass had to make a map.
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At least the movie re DC is actually being filmed in DC. So many movies (and television shows) that are set in American cities are actually filmed in Canadian ones.
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Guest #34,
Actually that was the Department of Energy "Forrestal" building, not FBI.
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Well Dc has a better track record than Alaska when it comes to representation in the movies. They won't even film in the same country when they base something in AK.
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There is a commercial running currently (I think it is for Hotwire.com or some other travel site) where they show hotels and room rates in difference cities, and when they show DC (with a weird mix of real people and animation), they show a hotel that appears to be about where the Smithsonian Castle is (because the Capitol is in the background) except that there is a divided 4 lane road with cars meandering along where the Mall should be.
Guest #6 asks "why should we care?" Krisa makes a good point on this, but I think the question is "how can we not care?" It is a question of authenticity. If I get interviewed by WaPo, for example, or even more excitingly, by DCist, and my name is misspelled, I'd be upset. If I do a good job at work but then a coworker gets the credit, I'd be upset. Similarly, if a movie is going to be set in DC, then it should reflect DC, not some fictionalized faux DC or conveniently contrived city that also has a picture of the Capitol spliced in somewhere. Be proud of your city - do you not think New Yorkers would lose their shit if some filmmaker tried to pass of the Atlanta subway system as the NYC subway or showed the Statue of Liberty north of Manhattan?
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My favorite has to be the scene from that classic action flick Navy SEALs (starring Michael Biehn and Charlie Sheen!) where they're eating dinner in a restaurant that, from the view of the Jefferson, has to be located in the middle of the Tidal Basin.
No Way Out's Georgetown Metro station is way up there, though.
As is the fact that the producers of the show Criminal Minds apparently believe that Quantico is actually located at Bolling AFB. And that you can take Metro there.