Movies shot in Toronto but set somewhere else – now with pictures

October 13, 2009 12:20 PM

Paul Giamatti and Matt Damon star in Resident Hunting: Shoot ’Em Up by the Dozen 2.For decades, Toronto has been a cheap, versatile city in which to shoot movies. Most of the time, Toronto pretends to be some other place – mostly New York. Using DVD screencaps, city blog Torontoist takes a sightseeing tour through over 50 films shot in Toronto that mostly pretend to be set somewhere else, from (yes) Good Will Hunting to the HBO version of Grey Gardens.

Ironic favourites: Detroit Rock City, Hollywoodland, American Psycho. Not listed, but definitely shot here: Chicago.

posted by joeclark (70 comments total)

Edit: Nope, Chicago’s in there after all.
posted by joeclark at 12:26 PM on October 13

Ooh. My hometown of Richmond VA is often used as a cheaper DC.
posted by xmutex at 12:27 PM on October 13

This would be significantly more interesting if not for the google ads right on top of the content, and the content somehow flowing all over itself, with text on top of text and/or images. As is, it is completely unreadable.
posted by tocts at 12:28 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

Didn't these movies suck enough the first time? Do we need to revisit?
posted by mannequito at 12:32 PM on October 13

Rendering OK in two browsers here, Tocts. Try reporting it via their contact link.
posted by joeclark at 12:33 PM on October 13

I want to make a movie or tv series about the film/tv industry that's set in Toronto. But Toronto will never, ever appear in it. Anytime characters are outside, random US and European cities will substitute for TO. It'll have some sort of Toronto or Canuckian related title, and it will open with a flyover from the lake over the city... except it'll be Cleveland or Chicago. They'll talk about meeting people at Pearson, but the establishing shot will be LAX. They'll walk down Toronto neighborhoods with the Gateway Arch visible in the distance.

Then they'll have a business meeting in Vancouver, which will be played by San Diego complete with at least a piece of a CVN visible.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 12:38 PM on October 13 [12 favorites]

lolfilmeconomics
posted by kingbenny at 12:40 PM on October 13

Rendered fine in my browsers as well.

Forever Knight and X-Files were shot there IIRC.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:40 PM on October 13

Hollywoodland was pretty good, I thought. American Psycho is in there. And almost everyone else who isn't me likes A Christmas Story.

That's about it, though.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:41 PM on October 13

I used to work in an area of Toronto that is frequently used for this kind of thing. Although it was downtown, the view of all the major recognizable buildings (including the CN Tower) was blocked out by other buildings. So it could be made to look like just about anywhere.

It was fun to see the lengths they would go to in order to make it look like somewhere else. A line of yellow New York City taxis was a common sight during my walk to work from the train station, making me wonder if I had made some kind of epic navigational error during the commute.

Sometimes we saw street signs covered up with more "American" looking signs, or with entirely different street names on them. Canada Post mailboxes frequently got covered up by slightly oversize US Postal Service ones that could just be dropped over top. On at least one occasion, fire hydrants were re-painted from their usual "find me quickly" bright yellow to "just let it burn" silver.

But the fake NYC subway entrance was the best thing. Just a U-shaped railing on top of wood painted to look like concrete, with appropriate lights and signs, plopped down on the sidewalk across the street from my office. From the right angle, you couldn't tell there were no stairs within that fence.

God help anybody who was actually trying to navigate intersections with deliberately wrong street names on them, or mail a letter, or any unfortunate tourist trying to figure out how to get the mystical portal to the subway station to open up. Especially as we were about a block away from the real subway.
posted by FishBike at 12:42 PM on October 13 [14 favorites]

I see now that, even after multiple previews, I have two echoes of “most” in my post. I’ve got the most “most” in my post.
posted by joeclark at 12:50 PM on October 13

I'll be happy when Matt Damon's visage disappears from the forefront of the cultural zeitgeist into a zone of relative obscurity, much the way Tom Cruise's finally seems to have done. Paul Giamatti can stick around, though he's only marginally less annoying.
posted by blucevalo at 12:58 PM on October 13

A line of yellow New York City taxis was a common sight during my walk to work from the train station

Funnily enough, on the way to the last Toronto meetup my wife was momentarily confused by the NYPD cruiser sat at the lights waiting to do another lap of Queens Park Crescent, until I pointed out the film equipment set up in the park. When I first got here I had no idea what all the big white trucks were everywhere until I did some hunting around. They are everywhere, catering and equipping little location crews aplenty.
posted by Brockles at 1:03 PM on October 13

My favourite stand-in has to be Vancouver for NY in Jackie Chan's Rumble in the Bronx. The first half of the film is very carefully shot as Generic North American City. It's plainly not NY, but inoffensive enough to be believable, or at least, not completely unbelievable.

From the middle of the second act, though the cinematography gets a bit sloppy, briefly showing bits of geography that NY would need a continentectomy to have. By the third act (YT), the director (our man JC), clearly didn't care anymore: the climactic battle is on a hovercraft (a ferry craft that NY has never had to the best of my googlage, btw) with some inconvenient geomorphology in the distance.

You can just see the logic here: there's this great bit of cinematographic scenery just looming across the bay at you. You've been so careful to keep shots tight, to not let the camera get a glimpse of the horizon to get Generic Urbanscape, but at the end of the movie, you just can't resist the final confrontation between hovercraft and bad guys on the golf course. If there's a few geographic inconsistancies in the back of the shot, who's going to notice anyway, right? It's not like a lot of people have ever been to NY. And so, Jackie Chan, for all his other accomplishments, gave us one of the great what-the-fuck moments of cinema: seeing the might snow-capped mountains of the Bronx.
posted by bonehead at 1:07 PM on October 13 [9 favorites]

Am I the only one disappointed that the Paul Giamatti/Matt Damon vehicle isn't a real movie?
posted by anthom at 1:08 PM on October 13

Am I the only one disappointed that they wouldn’t be naked in it? (Paul Giamatti plays Liberace?)
posted by joeclark at 1:13 PM on October 13

I want to make a movie or tv series about the film/tv industry that's set in Toronto. But Toronto will never, ever appear in it.

Due South pulled a trick like that. The show was set in Chicago and shot in Toronto - all except for one episode, which took place in Toronto, but was made in Chicago.
posted by Iridic at 1:14 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

I remember once going past King/Bay on the 504 and there were probably 20, 30 NYC taxis parked all along the streets. When the heck do they put those things the other 364 days of the year?
posted by GuyZero at 1:16 PM on October 13

Don't forget Vancouver; Film economics explaining ever so neatly why most extra-terrestrial planets look a lot like British Columbia.
posted by Authorized User at 1:17 PM on October 13 [2 favorites]

When the heck do they put those things the other 364 days of the year?

I'm pretty sure the laws of physics don't allow them to be put into another time.
posted by FishBike at 1:18 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

This location from "A Christmas Story" is about 200 yards from where I'm typing this.
posted by davebush at 1:19 PM on October 13

I had my suspicions about Harold and Kumar and was presently deemed correct. Up Canuckistan!
posted by pick_the_flowers at 1:23 PM on October 13

I live in the east end, and four or five years ago the stretch of Queen St. between Broadview and Degrassi was completely made over '30s-style for Cinderella Man (many of the businesses kept the old-timey signage after the production ended). It was actually quite nice riding my bike to work in the morning, usually before filming started for the day, with all of the extras milling about in their exquisite period costumes and Depression-era cars lined up along the curb.

On the other hand, I once sat in the Lone Star on Front Street and watched Dan Aykroyd and John Goodman film take after take after take of a scene from Blues Brothers 2000 in which they ran down the steps of a courthouse, legs and arms akimbo for extra hi-larity.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:27 PM on October 13

Huh. What does it say about me that I've seen none of these movies?
posted by grapefruitmoon at 1:31 PM on October 13

They filmed the exterior shots of the 2007 version of "Hairspray" on Roncesvalles (at Dundas) and that was funny - all those little shop smade up like, what, 50's Pittsburgh or where ever. It was pretty convincing as long as you didn't go into the mis-signed shops.
posted by GuyZero at 1:32 PM on October 13

Sorry, Baltimore.
posted by GuyZero at 1:34 PM on October 13

The best part of being a life long Torontonian is spotting these as you're watching movies. The most surreal example was sitting in a movie theatre watching the trailer for Dirty Work, where Norm McDonald moons a movie theatre lineup... and realizing I was in that very theatre!

It's especially thrilling when you can recognize minor interiors. Hey, that scene from Get Rich or Die Trying was shot in the Kathedral! Hey, that's my old science classroom showing up in Mean Girls!
posted by yellowbinder at 1:42 PM on October 13 [2 favorites]

Oh, and the scene from Hairspray where they all march on the TV station was right down the street from where I lived at the time. I think it's actually a fortune cookie factory.
posted by yellowbinder at 1:44 PM on October 13

I want to make a movie or tv series about the film/tv industry that's set in Toronto. But Toronto will never, ever appear in it.

They didn't really manage it in Blood Ties but for a series that is clearly set in Toronto they filmed almost nothing in the City. It's not too often that Vancouver gets to do a stand-in as Toronto.
posted by cirhosis at 1:44 PM on October 13

They came close with Made in Canada, which did it's best to skewer the industry. Contains one of my favorite takes on the "if you can't spot the sucker at the table, it's you" joke.
posted by nomisxid at 1:46 PM on October 13

A lot of Pushing Tin was shot in my old neighbourhood in Etobicoke. I cycled past one set near the lake the summer before it was released, but wasn't sure exactly what was going on and didn't try to snoop.

The next spring, we were watching it in the theatre when I saw that exact lakeshore location and actually squealed. (I don't usually squeal, or squee, or any of that stuff. Honest.) I then spent most of the rest of the film looking out for landmarks: "Oh! It's the 403! And there's that tacky sports bar on the Queensway!".

So can anyone tell me how the movie ended?
posted by maudlin at 1:46 PM on October 13

Don't forget Vancouver; Film economics explaining ever so neatly why most extra-terrestrial planets look a lot like British Columbia.

To be fair, Vancouver is one alien-ass-looking city.
posted by Navelgazer at 1:49 PM on October 13

yellowbinder: The best part of being a life long Torontonian is spotting these as you're watching movies.

I always love the bizarre continuity issues that arise only when you know the particular geography in which a film is shot-- there's a scene in High Fidelity when John Cusack gets on a Purple Line train, then he talks to the camera for a while, and then the scene ends when the train goes underground... which the Purple Line never does.

There's also a scene in that not-very-good Nicolas Cage film The Weather Man where Nic leaves his house in the Chicago suburbs to go to the Chinese food place on the corner. He walks out the front door in Glen Ellyn, there's a cut, and suddenly he's standing in the middle of Wicker Park, thirty miles away.
posted by shakespeherian at 1:54 PM on October 13

shakespeherian, that works the other way around too, when you know the geography of where it's shot, but not where it's set, characters will be teleporting around town like nobody's business! Wish I could think of a concrete example off the top of my head, but I know there's plenty in the Reel Toronto articles.
posted by yellowbinder at 1:58 PM on October 13

Great caption: Toronto is cheaper to film in than Boston. How do you like them apples?

I had no idea about Good Will Hunting...you'd think for all the Boston love in that movie, the city would have been glad to have more of the film actually shot there
posted by jaybol at 2:02 PM on October 13

hey maudlin, our house backs onto that big park in Etobicoke (west Toronto), adjacent to the water treatment plant that was dressed up to be the control centre in "Pushing Tin".

(and sorry I forgot the ending)

Other film factoids:
- the old 3-storey art-deco brick cottages in said park were used as the campus of all the "Police Academy" films. These cottages were originally the wards of a large psychiatric hospital, then near-abandoned, and frequently used in films, a whole slew of second-string TV shows produced in the 80s and 90s, or as cheap production offices. Finally, they were taken over by Humber College and have been beautifully restored.

- a magnificent old house in same park, currently used as a women's shelter, was in "Urban Legend"
posted by Artful Codger at 2:16 PM on October 13

you'd think for all the Boston love in that movie, the city would have been glad to have more of the film actually shot there

MOVIE MAGIC, baby!

The rebates and incentives were just ridiculous in Canada for so long... so much production ran up there... and some cities/states aren't willing to suffer what they percieve as the economic loss to cut rates/taxes for a project just because its story is "home grown."

fire hydrants were re-painted from their usual "find me quickly" bright yellow to "just let it burn" silver.

This line actually tickles me greatly. Is silver that much less visible then yellow? I guess I'd have to see it..
posted by cavalier at 2:26 PM on October 13

Forever Knight and X-Files were shot there IIRC.

Although not to nitpick, but Forever Knight was actually set in Toronto as well, so I don't think that counts?

(Among other things, Forever Knight taught me the correct pronunciation, which is "Tronno.")
posted by ErikaB at 2:32 PM on October 13

Yes, you can tell the visitors who keep trying to squeeze that second "t" in there. It's silent.
posted by GuyZero at 2:35 PM on October 13

I remember being in South Africa and watching a fairly low budget tv show set in a city that was supposed to San Francisco.

Nobody with me at the time could figure out why I started laughing and later got a little homesick when the characters walked past the Royal Bank of Canada and a bunch of other little slices of Canadiana.

Few things could be more Canadian than getting homesick by seeing a Canadian city being portrayed as an American one on a low-budget show.
posted by Deep Dish at 2:38 PM on October 13 [5 favorites]

I do appreciate seeing the CIBC in early episodes of Smallville.
posted by blue_beetle at 2:57 PM on October 13

My wife and I play this game where we watch TV shows and wait for one of the many actors from the Toronto area to show up as one offs in each others programs. And because of commonplace-ness of this, she has become obsessed with the idea of going there for the express purpose of figuring out a way to get into an episode of one of the shows that we like as an extra or a background character (she has the same plan for getting into a Bollywood movie and a Zombie film, but I digress...)

There is a scene in one of the episodes of Supernatural that I always loved. The two main characters are walking towards a movie studio, and one turns to the other and comments on how much Los Angeles weather is like Canadian weather. In the background you can see that they are pretty clearly actually in or around Toronto.
posted by quin at 3:12 PM on October 13

What an odd, nearly incomprehensible site.
posted by clvrmnky at 3:37 PM on October 13

I was a zombie in Toronto....
posted by HuronBob at 3:42 PM on October 13

yup - this list doesn't even scratch the surface - there's a huge amount of films shot in Toronto. I work in visual effects, and I've worked on about 10 of the films in that list. it's great!
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:14 PM on October 13

Is that like the west coast version of Vancouver standing in for Seattle?

As in 88 Minutes, where they show practically a close of the street signs in a corner of Davie St., IN SEATTLE, and then there's an Aerial shot where Al Pacino crosses Burrard Bridge IN SEATTLE.

But it's ok because there's one scene with the Space Needle on the background, so it's definitely Seattle.
posted by qvantamon at 4:23 PM on October 13

/east coast version/
posted by qvantamon at 4:24 PM on October 13

You had my hopes up that they had somehow announced a sequel to Shoot 'Em Up, arguably the finest movie in which the hero kills multiple people with carrots 2007 had to offer.
posted by HostBryan at 4:26 PM on October 13

Didn't these movies suck enough the first time? Do we need to revisit?
posted by mannequito at 12:32 PM on October 13 [+] [!]

Actually a good deal of these movies are very good. And pretty much universally agreed to be so.... So, I mean, do you just hate all movies?

Sorry just that reeked of hyper-snark. That is all.
posted by Lacking Subtlety at 4:28 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

no, X files was shot in Vancouver
posted by gonna get a dog at 4:32 PM on October 13

Ah, I lived in the gayborhood of toronto (Maitland, near Church Street & Wellesley) during the time when the North American Queer as Folk series was being shot. I can't tell you how many times I tried to go get a bag of milk in my jammies and was blocked by some chipper PA with a clipboard telling me that I couldn't walk through the shot. In typical Canadian fashion, I smiled, said "Ok, ya, sure," and then walked right through.

And I was attending UofT at the time, which was frequently being closed for shots of "Relic Hunter" and "Ice Princess" and other inane stuff.

On the upside, I got to watch Undercover Brother in the theatre that actually appears in the big motorcycle chase scene. I turned to my sister and said, "Hey! That's Queen street! Hey that's Richmond! Hey, now that's Adelaide…THAT'S US RIGHT THERE!!"

good times.
posted by LMGM at 4:52 PM on October 13

My favorite part in Short Circuit (or was it Short Circuit 2?) Is a car chase involving a (radio-controlled!) K-Car with Ontario plates zooming past the headquarters of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce.
posted by Sys Rq at 4:55 PM on October 13

Few things could be more Canadian than getting homesick by seeing a Canadian city being portrayed as an American one on a low-budget show.

Oh yes indeed. Or anything Canadian at all when you're homesick - when I was in Texas I cried watching Project Grizzly of all things (crying with laughter would be normal), because there's this scene in a Country Style Donuts shop, and it was all so familiar and far away. I knew I was really homesick when I found recognizing Toronto in movies or TV shows "awww" inducing instead of eye-rolling.

Growing up in Toronto can ruin films too, since I knew that building wasn't the headquarters of an evil corporation in Scanners, it was just the freakin' Science Centre (des Sciences).
posted by biscotti at 6:03 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

Huh. What does it say about me that I've seen none of these movies?

It means you should go rent "Last Night."
posted by Beardman at 6:05 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

Anne Rice's novel, Feast of All Saints, was originally set in New Orleans. It got made into a movie in Kingston because the nineteenth-century British architecture there looks like nineteenth-century New Orleans architecture. The production company covered the streets with wood chips from trees felled by the 1998 ice storm to make the paved streets look like dirt roads.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:06 PM on October 13

Yellowbinder and shakespherian, some examples of geographical discontinuity have been addressed previously.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 6:17 PM on October 13

Toronto: secret cross-dressing capital of the world.
posted by storybored at 6:45 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

Hunh. Just a couple of hours ago I was on a train thinking that Torontoist's Reel Toronto series might make an interesting fpp. Weird. Eerie.

ROU_Xenophobe:

I want to make a movie or tv series about the film/tv industry that's set in Toronto. But Toronto will never, ever appear in it.

The Newton Boys has that oddest of things: scenes set in Toronto when the thing was filmed in the USA.

fishbike:

I used to work in an area of Toronto that is frequently used for this kind of thing. Although it was downtown, the view of all the major recognizable buildings (including the CN Tower) was blocked out by other buildings. So it could be made to look like just about anywhere.

Five bucks says it's Victoria Street around King.

yellowbinder:

The best part of being a life long Torontonian is spotting these as you're watching movies. The most surreal example was sitting in a movie theatre watching the trailer for Dirty Work, where Norm McDonald moons a movie theatre lineup... and realizing I was in that very theatre!


For a reason that passeth understanding, I saw Steven Seagal's -- I think -- final theatrical release, Exit Wounds, in the late lamented Uptown. I had this same experience you describe with the establishing shot of Seagal's character heading into the parking garage on Charles Street, maybe thirty seconds' walk from the front doors of the Uptown. This was as nothing compared to a year later, seeing something in the Bloor that had been shot in the auditorium of the Bloor. The scene's dialogue was partly obscured by the nervous laughter from the audience. It was a sensation akin to looking in the mirror and not seeing yourself.

shakespeherian:

There's also a scene in that not-very-good Nicolas Cage film The Weather Man where Nic leaves his house in the Chicago suburbs to go to the Chinese food place on the corner. He walks out the front door in Glen Ellyn, there's a cut, and suddenly he's standing in the middle of Wicker Park, thirty miles away.

In The Sixth Day, Schwarzenegger steps onto the bottom of an escalator in Vancouver and steps off the top in Toronto, three time zones away. Of course, I think he also breaks into the evil corporation's headquarters on the 33rd floor or something, after about eleven establishing shots have shown it to be the Central Library in Vancouver, which is obviously about five stories tall.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:20 PM on October 13

Narc was awesome. Always wondered what bleak shithole it was set in. Great post.
posted by docpops at 8:06 PM on October 13

The Card Cheat, I remember when Cinderella Man was being filmed, because I went to Queen St. one of the filming days to help my friend pick out an iPod. We proceeded to turn, look out the window, and see Russell Crowe wandering around in his period costume, alongside the various period cars and such. The juxtaposition of holding the iPod while watching the Depression outside temporarily short-circuited my brain, and I muttered something about being an anachronism a few times until told to be quiet by said friend, who, as an actor, is grateful for anything that brings film to the city.

Also, my boyfriend and I got way too excited at that part in Harold and Kumar where their friends are clearly eating in a Lick's. Way, way too excited.
posted by ilana at 8:31 PM on October 13

I had that same sitting-in-the-theatre-that-is-in-a-shot-onscreen weird-out experience while watching the first Harold and Kumar movie in a multiplex on the Queensway. There should be a german word for it
posted by aiglet at 8:38 PM on October 13

Bit o' trivia: if you've seen Grey Gardens there's a scene where Drew Barrymore does a little improv dance in a guy's lap. That lap belongs to MeFite Paddle to Sea.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 8:55 PM on October 13

If you think these movies are bad, you really don't want to see what they shoot in Halifax. (If it's a Lifetime movie of the week, chances are it was shot there.)
posted by Sys Rq at 9:04 PM on October 13

Once I got a memo at work that said, more or less, "Tonight, Adelaide Street will be closed to traffic and filled with wreckage. Sorry for the inconvenience."

Much much later that night, I walked down that street. No one was about; just the remnants of what looked like a war zone. Overturned buses, bullet holes and smashed windows in all the buildings, the burnt-out shells of smashed-cup cars, trash and crap just everywhere, and newspaper boxes shouting the headline 'ZOMBIES TAKE OVER RACCOON CITY'. Completely surreal.
posted by emeiji at 9:28 PM on October 13 [1 favorite]

ricochet biscuit: Five bucks says it's Victoria Street around King.

Close enough. Within a pretty short block of there anyway.
posted by FishBike at 5:46 AM on October 14

In typical Canadian fashion, I smiled, said "Ok, ya, sure," and then walked right through.

Oh, my yes. I have ruined more scenes trying to get to work (I used to live in Kensington Market and Chinatown) that I care to admit. i was less polite about it sometimes -- it depended on how much of a rush I was in, and my general feelings that day toward production companies.
posted by clvrmnky at 6:00 AM on October 14

I almost forgot; a scene (or, more accurately, a shot) from Silent Hill was filmed directly across the street from my house. I came home from work one day to find the day care on the other side of the road all made up to look like it had weathered the apocalypse, and there was a huge crane shooting the heroine running past the day care and briefly slowing down to read a weathered sign. My wife and I sat on the front step and watched them film this shot maybe a dozen times, which took a couple of hours. When my wife saw the film she told me that the shot was so short she had to rewind it to be sure it was the one we watched being filmed. I keep this in mind every time I wonder how and why Hollywood films are so expensive to produce.
posted by The Card Cheat at 6:15 AM on October 14

To be fair, Vancouver is one alien-ass-looking city.

The worst of it is SFU, which has been used for many sci-fi shoots. Standing in the middle of SFU quad in the fog, i.e. standing in the middle of giant concrete rectangle, is straight-up dystopian creepy.
posted by ssg at 12:34 PM on October 14

Don't forget Vancouver; Film economics explaining ever so neatly why most extra-terrestrial planets look a lot like British Columbia.

I may have said this before, but I was always impressed with the location scouts for The X-Files at finding just the right building or topography to represent where they wanted the story to take place. And I don't recall being distracted by mountains very often during the Vancouver run, but I was amused by one of the California-filmed episodes set in the Great Prairie states like Kansas with snow-capped Sierra Nevadas in the background.

Another counterexample with brilliant location choices is The Package, an early Andrew Davis thriller with Tommy Lee Jones in which Chicago stands in for various world capitals.
posted by dhartung at 7:07 PM on October 14

Much much later that night, I walked down that street. No one was about; just the remnants of what looked like a war zone. Overturned buses, bullet holes and smashed windows in all the buildings, the burnt-out shells of smashed-cup cars, trash and crap just everywhere, and newspaper boxes shouting the headline 'ZOMBIES TAKE OVER RACCOON CITY'. Completely surreal.

I was on Adelaide that day, too. I was leading a walking tour for a group of visitors to Canada and as we emerged from the PATH onto the street level, one Australian guy looked dubiously at the burned-out cars and rubble and asked, "How long were we underground?"
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:34 PM on October 14 [3 favorites]