Idea: Charlotte movie tour
I've got an idea for Charlotte: A movie tour.
You'd pay a fee, board a bus, and see sights associated with the many movies that have been filmed in and around Charlotte. The stops would include:
--The triangular Government Center building uptown. It doubled as the hospital that housed Jodie Foster in 1994's "Nell," which featured Mayor Pat McCrory as an extra.
--Freedom Park. It's where Jack Black saw the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow while his friends saw a much-heavier version of her in the 2001 Farrelly Brothers film "Shallow Hal."
--Memorial Stadium at Central Piedmont Community College. Later this year, George Clooney and Renee Zellwegger's "Leatherheads" will bring it to movie screens as the site of some 1920s football games.
--Lowe's Motor Speedway - Take your pick. It's where Tom Cruise met Nicole Kidman while filming 1990's "Days of Thunder," leading to their ill-fated marriage; the ESPN biopic of Dale Earnhardt was filmed there; and more recently, Will Ferrell visited for last year's "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." If your tour guide is super-generous, he or she might mention that Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson visited for 1983's "Stroker Ace."
--Perhaps extended versions of the tour could take visitors with lots of patience out to the South Carolina fields where 2000 Revolutionary War pic "The Patriot" brought Mel Gibson for filming, or the countryside in Anson County that served as the single N.C. shot in 2003's "Cold Mountain," which provoked outrage when producers made the much-cheaper Romania double as the film's North Carolina setting.
This idea struck me last weekend while visiting friends in Boston and taking the Boston Movie Tour, which visits sites associated with such memorable Boston films as "The Departed," "Mystic River" and "The Verdict," along with TV shows including "Ally McBeal" and "Boston Legal" (hey, we've got local sites from teen TV faves "Dawson's Creek" and "One Tree Hill" too!). The tour guide played DVD scenes from the movies as we passed the actual locations. We stopped mid-tour to knock back a pint in the L Street Tavern, home of scenes from "Good Will Hunting," and concluded at the bar that served as the exterior shot for TV show "Cheers."
Those who've followed this blog are probably aware I'm a movie geek, so this tour was perfect
for me. It seemed to do pretty good business in Beantown. North Carolina's status as the third-most-popular state for filmmaking behind California and New York provides us with plenty of opportunities to create a similar tour here. Click here to see a list of movies filmed in this region.
What do you think? Would you pay to take this tour?
You'd pay a fee, board a bus, and see sights associated with the many movies that have been filmed in and around Charlotte. The stops would include:
--The triangular Government Center building uptown. It doubled as the hospital that housed Jodie Foster in 1994's "Nell," which featured Mayor Pat McCrory as an extra.
--Freedom Park. It's where Jack Black saw the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow while his friends saw a much-heavier version of her in the 2001 Farrelly Brothers film "Shallow Hal."
--Memorial Stadium at Central Piedmont Community College. Later this year, George Clooney and Renee Zellwegger's "Leatherheads" will bring it to movie screens as the site of some 1920s football games.
--Lowe's Motor Speedway - Take your pick. It's where Tom Cruise met Nicole Kidman while filming 1990's "Days of Thunder," leading to their ill-fated marriage; the ESPN biopic of Dale Earnhardt was filmed there; and more recently, Will Ferrell visited for last year's "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby." If your tour guide is super-generous, he or she might mention that Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson visited for 1983's "Stroker Ace."
--Perhaps extended versions of the tour could take visitors with lots of patience out to the South Carolina fields where 2000 Revolutionary War pic "The Patriot" brought Mel Gibson for filming, or the countryside in Anson County that served as the single N.C. shot in 2003's "Cold Mountain," which provoked outrage when producers made the much-cheaper Romania double as the film's North Carolina setting.
This idea struck me last weekend while visiting friends in Boston and taking the Boston Movie Tour, which visits sites associated with such memorable Boston films as "The Departed," "Mystic River" and "The Verdict," along with TV shows including "Ally McBeal" and "Boston Legal" (hey, we've got local sites from teen TV faves "Dawson's Creek" and "One Tree Hill" too!). The tour guide played DVD scenes from the movies as we passed the actual locations. We stopped mid-tour to knock back a pint in the L Street Tavern, home of scenes from "Good Will Hunting," and concluded at the bar that served as the exterior shot for TV show "Cheers."
Those who've followed this blog are probably aware I'm a movie geek, so this tour was perfect
for me. It seemed to do pretty good business in Beantown. North Carolina's status as the third-most-popular state for filmmaking behind California and New York provides us with plenty of opportunities to create a similar tour here. Click here to see a list of movies filmed in this region.
What do you think? Would you pay to take this tour?
posted by Leigh at
10:40 AM
9 Comments:
No.
Don't forget the mill house in Noda which was the home of the girl in Carrie II and the sculpture in the Square that was on the end of Hellraiser III.
I'd definitely pay for a tour like this -- and I'd take all my out of town friends when they come to visit.
Not a movie, but remember when Hootie & the Blowfish incorporated some Wilkinson Blvd. landmarks into a video?
Too bad the old Coliseum has been imploded, or you could show people where the classic Whoopi Goldberg movie Eddie (where she played the coach of the New York Knicks) was filmed.
And there was a movie with Patrick Swayze and Meat Loaf (Black Dog, I think) that was filmed in or around Charlotte.
Hey, I would ,I would be new and I think I would,sounds different!!!!
Tess
Thank you Liegh for doing such a great job digging up things for us to do around the region. I am not coming back to this BLOG and please enjoy my State that my Grandmother and her People the CHEROKEE Indians enjoyed for centuries .
If you include the surrounding region, "The Abyss" was filmed in Gaffney, SC.
Great post, thanks for writing
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