The Chicagoland area is the old stomping ground for Murray and other Second City alumni. Groundhog Day's Ramis was from Chicago. After all it was "like driving into Wisconsin" to film there...that is until the Badgers smote Murray's Xavier team in March Madness basketball. Will never forget Murray's broadcasting the Cubs game when Harry Caray was ill.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/30-years-ago-bill-murray-called-a-full-cubs-game-and-it-was-glorious_n_58fa4b85e4b00fa7de140d2c
The checkered hatbands on Chicago police were the idea of Richard J. Daley. On his annual vacation to the Ould Sod, he noticed the checkered bands on the caps of the local police and liked how they looked so he ordered them up for our police.
I believe that police in some other Commonwealth countries also have checkered hatbands.
Only Chicago and jolly England cops have checkered hats. Not the Ontario Provincial Police, the RCMP , Toronto Fuzz, none of them.
CSSHEGEWISCHLast time I looked, the Chicago police were wearing hats with checkerboard hatbands since about 1967 or 1968.
Shows how often I've seen or encountered the police in Chicago!
(For even more amusement: I went back and consulted actual pictures of Toronto police ... and they don't seem to have checkerboard on their hats at all!)
Overmod Toronto works to 'stand in' for some large American city with enough strategic prop signage and costumes (for some reason, they often seem to forget that American police don't wear those taxi hats with checkerboard trim, though)
Toronto works to 'stand in' for some large American city with enough strategic prop signage and costumes (for some reason, they often seem to forget that American police don't wear those taxi hats with checkerboard trim, though)
Last time I looked, the Chicago police were wearing hats with checkerboard hatbands since about 1967 or 1968.
What's funniest for me is when 'known landmarks' get played with by movie editors. A memorable example is in the original Ghostbusters, where you see one of the characters, I think Venkman, walking up to one of the Columbia buildings and going through the door. Now I'd been through that door a half a thousand times, and so was expecting what he'd do on the other side ... SURPRISE! He was in a huge lecture hall, in a different building far across campus!
There was a movie set in LAUPT, and actually filmed there. I think it was called Union Station. At one stage the actors go through a door which had a sign on a movable post saying "to Elevated Railway" and the next scene was on the Chicago El branch to the stockyards. A couple of photos of this line have appeared recently on Shorpy.com.
The next best was movie including the Titanic, which showed a small motorboat heading out from Cork in Ireland to meet the ship. The scene cut to a view looking up at the ship which was the Queen Mary in San Pedro.
I've related elsewhere the scenes in North West Frontier where a Spanish broad gauge locomotive represented an Indian metre gauge locomotive, including scenes where a real Indian train was passed by the Spanish train. A lot of careful cutting and possibly use of a wooden mock up of the Spanish loco...
Peter
Flintlock76Really? I didn't know that, I naturally assumed it was PA.
Why would you not? That's where the 'action' was supposed to have been happening.
We've had whole threads about the ways that movies create railroad 'verisimilitude' that doesn't hold up in various ways. This is actually a comparatively painless example.
Now the audience isn't likely to know, or care, what the haptic spaces on the Columbia campus are, and to them it's an Ivy League college building with an Ivy League grand interior inside. So it works the same way Woodstock works. In the way Toronto works to 'stand in' for some large American city with enough strategic prop signage and costumes (for some reason, they often seem to forget that American police don't wear those taxi hats with checkerboard trim, though)
And if you've never been either to Punxsutawney or Woodstock ... how would you know the one from the other?
More recently, the IRM provided a location for some shots in "Chicago Fire".
Apparently Gobbler's Knob in Punxatawney is just a small clearing in the woods. The producer wanted a town with a park, and the location guys came up with Woodstock. I'm guessing IRM was just a bonus.
Really? I didn't know that, I naturally assumed it was PA.
The movie was filmed in Woodstock IL, less than 10 miles from IRM in Union.
Woodstock is on Metra's UP-NW line.
It would have to be at the IRM, "Groundhog Day" takes place in Punksatawny PA, and needless to say the BN didn't go there.
The overhead wire at IRM is clearly visible in the "don't drive on the railroad tracks" scene.
Anyway I'm betting he'll swerve first.
I viewed "Groundhog Day" for the first time in many years. It seems that Bill Murray was driving on railroad tracks when he almost get hits by a "train" locomotive BN 6244 (a very clean locomitive!). I assume that it was filmed at the IRM at night with "fog" to keep it realistic. That BN 6244 has since been repainted into it original CBQ chinese red paint scheme and given it original number of CBQ 504.
Ed Burns
Happily retired from Northtown.
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