Movies & TV Shows set in a particular city that totally fail at it

[bilbao58]

^ Steam freezes in Chicago. (J/K)

[badrunner]

Fun fact: Breaking Bad was originally supposed to be set in the Inland Empire but moved production to New Mexico to take advantage of a tax break.

Vince Gilligan:

When I originally conceived of Breaking Bad, I intended to set it in Riverside, California. And of course southern California is not too far from the Mexican border either, but when I originally conceived of the show I wasn’t thinking as much in terms of the Mexican drug cartel component. I was thinking more in terms of a homegrown meth business that Walter White was going to establish. But early on, Sony, the studio that produces our show—this was after the script was written, and they knew I was thinking of southern California—they came to me and said, “What do you think about us placing the series in New Mexico instead?” And I said, “Well, why are you thinking that?” And they said New Mexico has a tax rebate for film and television production, and it’s a pretty substantial one. It’s a tax rebate of 25% of the money that we spend within the state returned to us by New Mexico. And really, it’s a hard [carrot] to turn down. It was established to bring production from all quarters of the U.S. into New Mexico, and it is something that unfortunately California does not have and so New Mexico very quickly became the place we decided to shoot our show for strictly financial reasons. We wanted our limited production budget to go that much farther.

But having said that, now that we shoot in New Mexico and now that I know it as a place to do business, now that I’ve learned to love Albuquerque so much, I realize that it’s just a wonderful place to set the show and I feel like I got very lucky that we wound up there, although it was not originally my decision.

[badrunner]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I'm actually surprised to learn that Chicago doesn't have steam exhaust in the winter?

I used to think the steam in NYC came out of the mixed sewer storm drain system (it smelled like it) but apparently the city has a steam distribution system for businesses and industry. I don't think many cities have something like that.

[Crawford]

I'm pretty sure the ConEd steam system is unique in terms of size/scope.

If Wikipedia is to believed, it's a larger system than the next nine systems on earth combined. So not surprising that those steam vents are stereotyped as local to NYC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Yo...y_steam_system

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I'm pretty sure the ConEd steam system is unique in terms of size/scope.

If Wikipedia is to believed, it's a larger system than the next nine systems on earth combined. So not surprising that those steam vents are stereotyped as local to NYC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Yo...y_steam_system

yeah, these kinds of central boiler multi-building steam systems are much more typically found in more "closed loop" settings, like college campuses and airports and the like. manhattan's city-wide steam system is quite unique in terms of its scale.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by badrunner

I used to think the steam in NYC came out of the mixed sewer storm drain system (it smelled like it) but apparently the city has a steam distribution system for businesses and industry. I don't think many cities have something like that.

Actually many older cities do. I think it’s a 19th century thing. San Francisco and Denver have them I believe. Probably much smaller than New York’s though.

Downtown wants more underground steam
GERALD D. ADAMS
SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER
July 19, 2000
Updated: Oct. 20, 2019 6:24 p.m.

A half-block west of Nordstrom and its classy retail neighbors sits an industrial plant where two smokestacks tower above all surrounding structures.

Its peculiar location aside, the plant is also a curiosity because surprisingly few people are aware of its existence and that it manufactures a product more at home in an era of Western Union than Web servers.

Station T, as it was once known, makes steam that is piped along a 13-mile-long underground grid to nearly 200 buildings in downtown San Francisco, providing such major structures as Nob Hill's Mark Hopkins Hotel, the landmark Flood Building and City Hall with space heating and hot water.

As rents in downtown buildings continue to multiply and architects increasingly look for ways to save space and costs, the Nordstrom neighborhood plant, known as the San Francisco Thermal Co., is getting more attention.

The more knowledgeable developers among them are looking not to some modern technology to provide heat for their buildings but to a process that is more than a century old, using as its primary fluid a compound of hydrogen and oxygen more available than any fossil fuel: water.

"It's an old technology," Richard Mayer, the company president said, "but with new applications."

Once owned by PG&E, San Francisco Thermal is the property of NRG Energy Co., which in turn is held by Northern States Power Co. of Minnesota.

However inconspicuous its plant has been in the past, it is gaining prominence, partly due to its growing success. Its clientele grew by more than 30 percent during the past decade and continues to increase at a rate of about 6 percent a year, Mayer said.

Too, the company is weighing the possibility of expanding its plant, probably into an adjacent parking lot to its east, as it prepares for a big new client a block away, the 300,000-square-foot addition to Moscone Convention Center, due to open in 2003.

At the thermal plant, on Jessie Street between Fifth and Sixth streets on a block also bordered by Market and Mission streets, things work differently.

Using a process that predates the Model T Ford, its five boilers turn water into steam that is piped via underground steel or reinforced concrete conduits to downtown buildings, including the Trans-america and Bank of America buildings, the Hilton, St. Francis, Meridien and Mark Hopkins hotels, and the Flood Building.

Steam is heated to such a point of pressure (125 pounds per square inch) that it's impelled by its own pressure through insulated pipes to the client's destination, with only a slight heat loss in the process.

While the plant considers an expansion, city officials and Nordstrom are eyeing adjacent parking lots - one of which is owned by Nordstrom - for a new parking garage to serve shoppers who flock to the area.

Another pending plan that should lift the steam plant's profile is the pipeline by which it intends to heat the cavernous new Moscone Convention Center West Annex now under construction. That, Mayer and garage officials say, will require construction of a pipeline that must run through the Fifth and Mission Garage . . . .

Nor can S.F. Thermal make any claim to being unique. Similar plants operate in such cities as Seattle; Vancouver; Harrisburg, Pa.; Scranton, Pa.; Concord, N.H.; and Holyoke, Mass. . . . .

https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/...am-3052302.php

[PhillyRising]

Originally Posted by Centropolis

both The Office and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia have routinely had towering mexican fan palm trees (tall LA street palms) in the background of shots.

The Goldbergs drives me batty....it's Jenkintown, PA...and the trees in winter all have green leaves and yes you see a palm tree once in a while. Come on ABC, you could have spent a few bucks and filmed the outdoor scenes in the actual Jenkintown at the actual Goldberg home in the 1980's. It's a cheesy show but it's set in Philly and that's why I watch it.

Mare of Eastown was filmed here but anyone who lives here knows that a lot of outdoor scenes were not filmed in Delco. I would yell at the TV..."That's Coatesville"...and the actual Easttown Township is in Chester County and it's a very wealthy community. At least the did film down along the Delaware in Delco...seeing the Barry Bridge on TV was cool.

[Hindentanic]

John Wayne's action epic "The Alamo" (1960) had many people convinced that San Antonio is a barren, scraggly brush desert full of tumbleweeds and cacti. Being authentically filmed within Texas was a major point of concern for producer and director Wayne, but the movie was actually filmed 115 miles west of San Antonio on a ranch in Brackettville, near the Rio Grande and West Texas with different topography and climate. The whole point of San Antonio's founding and the Alamo mission's construction was that the region was relatively fertile from abundant natural springs with an already settled indigenous population.

"The Night Shift" was a 2014-2017 medical drama on NBC set in the fictional San Antonio Memorial Hospital. Star Eoin Macken brought rugged hunkiness and character baggage to an ensemble cast playing overnight shift hospital staff in a sprawling, military-dependent, Anywhere-USA city in the era of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Although there was some promotional skyline scenery on the title shots along with dialogue references to various local San Antonio establishments, the show was actually filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and there were no on-location shots in San Antonio itself. It was admitted at the time that while the producers originally wanted to film in San Antonio and showcase the city throughout the series, Texas's film industry tax and incentive schemes were too pitiful to draw large-scale studio interest, and so New Mexico was chosen for its more hospitably prominent and convenient film industry base with more readily available production staff and equipment. A minor missed opportunity that could have promoted a different Texas city to television audiences (well, with better script writing perhaps), but then this was yet another example of the lackluster level of incentives that Texas creates for industries and localities that are not good-ol'-boy drinking buddies and campaign donors of the Texas governor.

[bilbao58]

Originally Posted by Hindentanic

the show was actually filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and there were no on-location shots in San Antonio itself.

No problem. The Sandia Mountains look just like Alamo Heights.

[emathias]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

I'm actually surprised to learn that Chicago doesn't have steam exhaust in the winter?

It's doesn't downtown, but near some universities and public housing they do have district stream.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by badrunner

I used to think the steam in NYC came out of the mixed sewer storm drain system (it smelled like it) but apparently the city has a steam distribution system for businesses and industry. I don't think many cities have something like that.

I assumed it was an older cities thing. Steam flowing from manhole covers is a common sight in Detroit during the colder months. When I moved to NY and saw that it happens here too I just assumed that it happens in all older cities.

[Atlas]

Johnny Tsunami ostensibly moves to Vermont but it's very obviously Salt Lake City. Not sure why they even chose to call it Vermont when the movie is about skiing and it doesn't affect the story.

[muppet]

Transformers Extinction - pretending art deco Detroit is Hong Kong


www.gannett-cdn.com

[muppet]

World War Z

Georgian era Glasgow is Philly


https://i.pinimg.com/originals/53/ba...892afa24bb.jpg


http://media.philly.com



https://glasgowonfilmdotcom.files.wordpress.com

[hauntedheadnc]

I couldn't possibly explain why, but my husband has recently become enamored of the CW Network rendition of Nancy Drew. We watched it last night while grimly plowing through an unsuccessful seafood lasagna, and as we did so we considered that Maine, where this show is set, is very disproportionately represented in the media. However, from watching Nancy Drew, and from what I recall of my husband's Haven fit, this is what I've learned about Maine:

No one anywhere is as fit, slim, trim, stylish or as expertly made up at all times as a denizen of small-town Maine. You have to go all the way back to Jessica Fletcher's Cabot Cove in Murder She Wrote to find the level of frumpiness you usually associate with small towns -- and only then if you imagine those 1980's hairstyles and fashions to still be the height of fashion, as they often are in small towns.

Also, every town in Maine is on the coast; the interior of the state is deserted. And every town has a lighthouse, has the mountains of British Columbia rising dramatically in the background, and, at least in the case of Nancy Drew, ships from Norwegian Cruise Lines are a common visitor to what is supposedly a dumpy, nowhere little place.

[Centropolis]

Not a city but they filmed in Montana in Far and Away as stand in for Missouri and Oklahoma. they conflated the ozarks for the old west (?) felt like it was filmed at Silver Dollar City in Branson

[Shawn]

hauntedheadnc, are there ever any giveaway sunset-over-the-ocean shots in Nancy Drew? Looks like it's filmed around Vancouver. Steven King stuff usually does Maine more correctly than others, as King likes to accurately portray all the glorious shades of Mainiacs. Under the Dome does a decent job of showing one of those interior towns.

There's an episode of Netflix's Dear White People that's supposed to be in Providence at Thanksgiving, but the foliage is mostly green. There's also a mountain like 10 blocks down the street from where the scene is filmed. Looks like a Pasadena side street.

Nothing beats the OP's Romeo Must Die, though. It's also my go-to example. There's a scene with a big model of "downtown Oakland" where a new arena will be built . . . even the model is of the Vancouver waterfront!! The freaking prop isn't even right.

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by Shawn

hauntedheadnc, are there ever any giveaway sunset-over-the-ocean shots in Nancy Drew? Looks like it's filmed around Vancouver. Steven King stuff usually does Maine more correctly than others, as King likes to accurately portray all the glorious shades of Mainiacs. Under the Dome does a decent job of showing one of those interior towns.

Not yet, actually. As for Stephen King, he's Maine to the core obviously but ironically enough, Under the Dome was filmed in North Carolina -- so it does a good job of portraying what you find in the Coastal Plain, away from the beach. King collects settings; if he visits someplace he uses it in his books and stories from that point forward. He visited Wilmington when they were making a screen adaptation of his novel Firestarter and since then Wilmington has served as settings for the short story The Night Flyer and the novel Joyland. He rode through Asheville on a motorcycle once several years ago, and Asheville got a cameo in his novel Duma Key.

Meanwhile, in addition to the Stephen King universe, the horror/action novels of John Connolly are set in Maine, the Silent Hill video game series is set in Maine, the novels of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child make references to Maine and at least one is set there, that godawful horror movie Darkness Falls is set in Maine, and so are Murder She Wrote, Haven, and Nancy Drew. You rarely see this level of media representation in other smallish states with a wide gothic streak such as, not to name names, South Carolina for instance. In fact, if I try to think of horror novels and such set in South Carolina, the only one that immediately comes to mind is a supremely stupid novel whose title I can't recall, but which featured Dante Gabriel Rossetti as a vampire unleashed on a small town in South Carolina after his coffin is salvaged from the wreckage of the Titanic. Although, for what it's worth, one of those John Connolly novels features South Carolina as one of the main characters is from there -- the main character has to fly down to the Charlotte airport and has quite a lot of shit-talk to say about Charlotte's airport and where you can fly to from there. Meanwhile, the novels of Kathy Reichs, set in Charlotte, occasionally have her visiting South Carolina as well.

But still. When are we going to get a slew of horror novels and movies and TV series set down here? We're meaner and crazier than Maine ever had time to be! And just think, it's usually hot as hell here also, so when the hapless victim-to-be is bumbling around in the woods trying to escape, in addition to the mandatory jiggly jubblies, you'll also get a fetching slick of boob sweat.

[Comrade]

lol I'm sorry Denver:



I mean, how hard would it have been to get a damn stock skyline shot of the city? lmao

[hauntedheadnc]

Originally Posted by Comrade

lol I'm sorry Denver:

*snip*

I mean, how hard would it have been to get a damn stock skyline shot of the city? lmao

What's that from?