Hollywood Invasion

By Jason Schwartz
Photos by Diana Levine

Newbury Street plays Madison Avenue in The Women

A remake of the 1939 Joan Crawford rib-tickler, The Women is set in New York, just like the original. While the movie is heavy on interior shots, there were a few outdoor scenes that required a Big Apple look.

The shot: Meg Ryan and Annette Bening stroll down the street, chatting.
The location: Near the intersection of Newbury and Berkeley, between the Brooks Brothers and Allen-Edmonds stores.
The cinematic sleight of hand: The director kept the camera zoomed in tight on the shops’ suitably Manhattanesque façades; to complete the look, phony New York street signs and a Gotham taxi were brought in. “You can cheat it in really pretty simple ways,” says location manager Tim Gorman.

The Boston Convention & Exhibition Center does a turn as Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport in 21

Post-9/11 prohibitions on filming in airports force producers to get creative with scenes involving air travel.

The shot: A trip through the Sin City airport by MIT’s globetrotting, card-counting blackjack team.
The location: The mezzanine floor of the convention center, whose cavernous size, many escalators, and towering glass windows mimic the aesthetic of a typical terminal.
The cinematic sleight of hand: Set designers hauled in security gates, line ropes, and rows of airport terminal seats. They also dropped in signs (“Baggage claim, this way”). Serendipity even worked in their favor: Through the walkway’s end window, you can see the neighboring Westin hotel—just the sort of vista you might get at a real airport.

Copley Square masquerades as Paris in The Pink Panther 2

With the current exchange rate, finding Parisian “looks” in Boston—a city chock-full of European architecture—is a lot cheaper than filming overseas.

The shot: Steve Martin and Andy Garcia address French reporters.
The location: In front of the Fairmont Copley Plaza, a spot that location scouts felt had a particularly Parisian appearance, owing to the hotel’s old-school limestone façade and wide awnings.
The cinematic sleight of hand: For the sake of authenticity, cars and street signs were again considered. In this case, eight European automobiles (including French-built Citroëns) were shipped to Boston and parked in the valet area along St. James Avenue. After swapping out all the English signs, the filmmakers completed the transformation with a trickier task: rounding up as many “French looking” extras as possible.

Plus: How Copley Square Extended Its Time in the Spotlight
Getting from Paris to Rome by crossing the street

One Pink Panther 2 scene takes place in the pope’s bedroom. Since a personal invitation from Benedict XVI himself was not forthcoming, the producers turned to the Boston Public Library’s Abbey Room, a space that could fit just as nicely into an Italian palace. Its checkered stone floor, marble archways, gilt wood ceiling, and mural of the quest for the Holy Grail provided the base; set builders brought in religious statues and other papal props to help complete the effect. For the finishing touch, they constructed a wall in the middle of the room with a door that led out onto a plaster balcony. In the movie, Steve Martin’s Inspector Clouseau will walk through the room and out onto that ledge and—thanks to some blue-screen magic—appear to be peering out onto St. Peter’s Square.

A roster of the Hub’s off-camera all-stars...