A few weeks ago this FILMING NOTICE appeared in the vestibule of my building. A Very Philly Christmas was shooting some scenes across the street in the Boston Public Garden, and on the corner at Charles Street.
Anyway, seeing that title A Very Philly Christmas, of course, gave me a very WTF moment. As in WTF is a film called A Very Philly Christmas doing being filmed in Boston?
Who knows? And as far as I'm concerned - other than being perplexed by the oddity of the title - who cares? Because when this film is released it's unlikely I'll be racing out to see it. Oh, I'd watch it for free on Prime or Netflix, just to see the locations. But, well, I'm too old for this stuff. So, yawn.
But if a moment of truth triggers great drama, this did trigger a minor flurry of WTF thoughts about the times I've seen movies where the locations just don't work.
Oh, it's not that in The Departed, my dry cleaners was supposed to be a French restaurant. I can live with that. And I did get to see Martin Scorsese on the day they were filming there.
And I could get a chuckle out of an old Spenser for Hire episode that showed Spenser and Susan dining al fresco in an outdoor restaurant in the Public Garden that does not now, nor did it ever, exist. I was just happy with all the glorious Boston scenes, including the one where Spenser and Susan dined at Toscano on Charles Street - still one of my favorite restaurants.
And I can forgive the stupid scene in Moonstruck, when Cher parks her car in Brooklyn Heights - I think on Cranberry or Pineapple Street - and walks around the corner to find herself in Little Italy. Which is in Manhattan.
And The Holdovers pretending Worcester City Hall was something else. Who cares? This was Worcester! My Worcester! In an Academy Award nominated movie!
No, the ones that bother me are the ones where it's completely obvious that the location is wrong.
I've forgotten its name, but I was watching a movie - something crimish - supposedly set in Worcester and its environs. I kept looking at it, asking myself where's that? And there were some scenes supposedly set in the farmish country outside Worcester. Sure, it was hilly, as Worcester County is. But there was something off. The barns weren't the beaten up New England barns built in the 1800's and attached to the houses. Not to mention that there was something really off about the light. It just didn't look like Worcester light.
Which it wasn't. The location for the filming was in Michigan.
Harrumph!
But one of my least favorite mis-locations was in some sci-fi series that ran on TNT a decade or so ago. I turned it on because of the Boston setting - a post-apocalyptic Boston, which was invaded by aliens of the non-human variety - and the fact that it starred Noah Wyle, who I always found to be a cutie. Anyway, there's a scene where the troops are walking through a cemetery supposedly in Lexington or Concord, Massachusetts. Now, there are plenty of cemeteries in Lexington and Concord, but this wasn't one of them.
The [dead] giveaway was a World War II monument that had the dates of the war carved into it as 1939-1945. Hmmmm. There isn't a WWII monument in the United States that lists the war's starting date as 1939. As even an utterly failed history student could tell you that Pearl Harbor was in 1941. Sheesh.
And now we have the potential abomination of Boston masquerading as Philadelphia.
Maybe there's a reason. Maybe the couple lives in Boston, but the really bad true thing that happened was in Philly. Or vice versa.
But even though they're both cities of a certain age, it doesn't make any sense for Boston to pretend to be Philly.
We'll see. Or not see. By the time the movie's out I'll no doubt have moved on to an different crank.
Meanwhile, location, location, location.
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