The Reality of Movies

Things I love about movies, that make me identify with movies, and make me appreciate them much more:

I love when I recognize where a movie was filmed. Most of the time this isn’t the most challenging observation, but seeing a car chase take place in the Florida Keys (2 Fast, 2 Furious), or a battle scene take place on Alcatraz (X-Men, The Last Stand), or turning point moment take place inside Fenway Park (Field of Dreams), regardless of whether or not I’ve been to the location, there’s something mildly rewarding when you can look at a recognizable landmark or backdrop in a movie and think ‘okay, this, this here is real.’ Movies that take place in fictional land (Avatar) or 10,000 B.C. (10,000 B.C.) don’t have that same universal recognition.

I love when I can say that I’ve actually been where the movie was filmed. Admittedly, this usually revolves around movies filmed in Chicago, but still, seeing a kid run across the street and down the alley I used to live next to (Wanted), or watching police break in on John Dillinger’s girlfriend in her apartment that I used to live in, yes, in (Public Enemies), or seeing some generic school conversations take place on a lawn in front of Lane Tech High School a mile down the road (High Fidelity), it’s more than rewarding, it’s almost like bragging rights. You yell at your friends that Rob’s music shop in High Fidelity is on Milwaukee in the now super-appropriately hipster Wicker Park. You freak out when the chase scene in Wanted goes from Newport and Sheffield to some parking garage nowhere near that intersection. You explain that while the walls look crappy and falling apart, they actually added all that junk to make it look old, but the walls looked fine when we lived there. It spawns such an instant connection with a movie, it’s hard to shrug off.

I love trying to visit otherwise mundane locations just to see where a movie was filmed. Even if the landscape is half of what you expected, there’s still a notion of bigger and better things once walked this ground when you wind up for a pitch in Dyersville, Iowa (Field of Dreams), when you glance down the street to see the Manhattan Bridge (famous view, seen during the blind driving in Scent of a Woman), when you play your regional club baseball tournament in Huntington, IN (the field where A League of Their Own was filmed). The reason we flock to Times Square is to get a glimpse of what we have so frequently seen on the big screen. We take pictures next to pointless town signs (Aurora – Wayne’s World; Welcome to Fargo – Fargo) and identifiable statues (Rocky, Philadelphia – Rocky III; Charging Bull, New York City – Hitch) just to show we’ve been there. We get drinks in otherwise pointless bars (Mothers, Chicago – About Last Night; Woody’s L Street Tavern, Boston – Good Will Hunting) to reenact scenes and conversations from our favorites. We go out of our way to find out addresses of apartments so when we’re in New York City, we can make a special trip just to see the street scene where Keno is yelling at Donny, Leo, Mikey, and April that Ralph is in trouble (Turtles II)(okay, I didn’t actually do this, but I really wanted to). There’s something overwhelming to think that we’re visiting where such famous pieces of history took place. We’re walking with the giants.

I love when movies are based on a true story. There have been many movies that I finished, thought the movie was somewhere between pretty good and really good, looked up some information on IMdb or Wikipedia, then, and only then find out that it was based on a true story, immediately vaulting the quality of the movie. You mean he really took the plea and filed for witness protection (Goodfellas)? You mean he actually forged checks and conned millions of dollars (Catch me if you Can)? You mean he seriously skipped the middle man and revolutionized heroin in America (American Gangster)? You mean to tell me these glorified thugs and thieves were real people that not only approved of the movie, but also provided accurate and consistent direction and critique of the actors during filming? Staggering. I’m even good when I find out that a creator or producer roughly based a show on his or her life (Mark Wahlberg, Entourage), especially because real people appear in the show. Knowing there was more reality than fiction behind the lens makes me not only marvel that these people ever existed, but allows these films to reach me on a level that 200 foot tall transforming aliens never could.

All of these things connect me to movies, but, it’s when I see the reality of a movie that it loses something. When I remember that this is production, that fantasy is taken away. When I walk the paths of Central Park and think of the film crews and off-camera makeup artist and the buffet table just behind the director’s chair, a little bit of magic is gone. When I finally get to the ‘Field of Dreams’ and realize it’s slightly better groomed than my 12-year-old baseball home field, it loses some mystique. When I see the outside of a famous building, but then realize that the interior couldn’t have possibly been the same. When something recognizable for being so ‘New York’ (Seinfeld’s apartment building) was really across the street from a Taco Bell in L.A., it loses its authenticity. When I realize that several actors were offered the role for someone that I couldn’t imagine another actor playing (Josh Hartnett, Sean William Scott, and Joshua Jackson were all offered the role of Evan in The Butterfly Effect before Ashton Kutcher), it loses the destiny that this movie was to be made.

I love grounding movies in reality, but I hate when I can’t get lost in a movie, when I can’t forget about all reality and just immerse myself in entertainment. I love dissecting the reality of movies, marveling at the process, dropping nuggets of trivia, but if you keep stripping away the layers, you find they were built like papier mâché, incredibly intricate on the surface, but withered and hallow inside.