I wrote this for MSN’s special Canada Day section, but was all distracted by my New York trip when it went up and never got around to posting a link. So if you missed it last week (and, let’s face it, you probably did), here’s my hopefully amusing gallery of Canadian cities posing as American locations.
If I left out a favorite example, please let me know. But remember, there’s only so much trivia you can squeeze into a thousand words …
I actually made a Sporcle quiz about Toronto filling in as various U.S. cities a few months ago, so I ended up with lots of examples. Understandably you had space constraints in the article, but here are some quite noticeable ones: Good Will Hunting (U of T and Central Tech as Harvard and MIT); Cinderella Man (Hudson’s Bay exterior as Madison Square Gardens); The Incredible Hulk (Sam-the-Record-Man sign); Hairspray (a block of Dundas St. West done up like early 60s Baltimore, because of the type of streetcars still in use here); The Long Kiss Goodnight (Honest Ed’s as a casino, R.C. Harris water filtration plant – which shows up in a lot of movies – as a penitentiary); X-Men (Casa Loma as Xavier’s School for the Gifted, Gooderham & Worts Distillery – which also shows up a lot – as the concentration camp where Magneto was as a child); Hollywoodland (Sunnyside Beach Pavillion); My Big Fat Greek Wedding (with it’s reception in a restaurant on the Danforth, and church interiors and exteriors shot at, ironically, Ukranian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox churches respectively); The Recruit (practically everywhere); Silver Streak (with a train crashing through a wall into Union Station); and Shoot ‘Em Up (which does absolutely nothing to hide the Toronto skyline, with the CN Tower clearly visible). There was also Resident Evil: Apocalypse (with New City Hall as Umbrella Corps. main buildings). Is Raccoon City American?
Sorry for the length, but this is the short list with some very recognizable locations in them if people want to check them out on DVD. I wonder if anyone else will chip in with similar trivia about other Canadian cities?
I think I mentioned this in a comment to another post, but the ABC series Rookie Blue very obviously shoots in Toronto and does little to disguise it. Characters were even handling Canadian currency in one scene. The show has never officially stated where it’s supposed to be taking place, but it generally feels like they’re pretending it’s an American city, probably New York.