Filmed in Houston

[LTAWACS]

on last night's episode of 'boston legal' one of their cases (they represented a death row inmate) took place ... you guessed it!  in HOUSTON.

now, i realize i am no cowboy or country music fan, but what nightspots here still have mechanical bull.  also what's up with the texas 'motifs' such as desktop figurines of bucking broncos, long horns over doors, etc. 

they really make houston look like it is still stuck in the 1980s.  hello, we've heard of IKEA and crate & barrel too ... LOL  well, at least the show's highlighting of texas' backwoods mentality on death penalty was accurate

nevertheless, they had some interesting shots of:

• downtown
  
• the same houston beltway (8)
  
• williams tower
  
• etc.
  

but then halfway through the episode they show a night skyline shot of dallas.  like, were they trying the case in houston and sleeping in a hotel room in dallas?  LOL

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

They are poor ignorant peons. As for the death penalty, fry them all. Let god sort them out. IKEA is hardly the landmark I would like for our city to have. It's just a big box. Who cares? And what kind of people shop at Crate & Barrel?

Dallas is becoming more and more of a pain in the butt...

[bruce_oneal]

They are poor ignorant peons. As for the death penalty, fry them all. Let god sort them out. IKEA is hardly the landmark I would like for our city to have. It's just a big box. Who cares? And what kind of people shop at Crate & Barrel?

Dallas is becoming more and more of a pain in the butt...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i will agree that dallas is becoming a pain in the butt ... as for the death penalty, my personal opinion is that if God is gonna sort it out, let Him sort it out.

i was just using crate and barrel and ikea as examples of modern shopping icons. not that i shop at either. just wonder why everything that is show on television about houston has to have cow horns and western motifs.

[LTAWACS]

i will agree that dallas is becoming a pain in the butt ... as for the death penalty, my personal opinion is that if God is gonna sort it out, let Him sort it out.

i was just using crate and barrel and ikea as examples of modern shopping icons.  not that i shop at either.  just wonder why everything that is show on television about houston has to have cow horns and western motifs.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I dont know. I usually wear my western hat. Don't you ever see them? In what part of town are you?

[tw2ntyse7en]

...

[bruce_oneal]

I think the true fabric of this city is what surrounds it in all directions. With that said, I don't think you'll find a shortage of ranches, cattle, cowboys, or rodeos. The city herself may have lost her roots, but the communities that support her haven't.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

roots are one thing... erroneous portrayals are another.

houston these days is no more country and western than it is thai, urban soul, or reggaton.

in all fairness though, i guess our (houston's) portrayal is no different from how they portray other cities:

• new orleans and burbon steet (as if there is nothing else of consequence there ... is there? just kidding)
  
• denver and it's downtown offices and mountains in the background --or better yet, flowing mountain streams
  
• chicago and the waterfront
  
• seattle and the space needle
  

[LTAWACS]

roots are one thing... erroneous portrayals are another. 

houston these days is no more country and western than it is thai, urban soul, or reggaton.

in all fairness though, i guess our (houston's) portrayal is no different from how they portray other cities:

• new orleans and burbon steet (as if there is nothing else of consequence there ... is there?  just kidding)
  
• denver and it's downtown offices and mountains in the background --or better yet, flowing mountain streams
  
• chicago and the waterfront
  
• seattle and the space needle
  

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I was thinking more along the lines of:

1. Corrupt cops and open air drug dealing

2. Frozen tundra

3. Gangster land

4. Hippes and earthquakes.

[tw2ntyse7en]

...

[bruce_oneal]

I was thinking more along the lines of:

1. Corrupt cops and open air drug dealing

2. Frozen tundra

3. Gangster land

4. Hippes and earthquakes.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

hey, but those are accurate!

[musicman]

they're pretty much all the same ... boring and expensive.  speaking of tolls, can anyone tell me why some are $1.25, some are $.75, and some are $.50?  is it by distance, by city zone, or just some arbitrary amount?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

supposedly distance.....the further between stops the more you're paying.

[Htowngirl]

I can't believe no one's mentioned Friday Night Lights! I'm not sure how much of actual Houston was filmed, but the playoff game takes place in the Dome... my friend was an extra in it.

Also, I haven't seen Reality Bites in years, but the Houston scene that I remember the most was Janeane Garafalo working at The Gap at the Galleria (it's been remodeled since then).

[Willowisp]

I just saw Reality Bites again for the first time in since I moved back to Houston, and there's a lot of great Houston scenes in the movie. The house they live in looks a bit like it's in the Heights and you can see the skyline in the exterior shots of it as well as a couple of scenes that are done right outside the house.

The downtown on top of a building scene seems to be The Shell building. You can see Penzoil Place across the street and The Bank Of America Building. It's done with a handheld and they spin around and you can see the Esperson as well.

There's a scene at a fountain where Winona Ryder and Ethan Hawke kiss and I think it's near downtown. Does Tranquility have fountains? It's not the waterwall at Williams Tower as far as I could tell.

There's a scene where Winona Ryder runs out of an elevator in the Williams Tower and Ben Stiller is chasing after her and they walk through the lobby to the outside of it. I want the shot to pan up to the tower at the end of it, but the scene doesn't do that...

I doubt that the coffee shop was in Houston, but I don't know. It reminds me of the coffee shop from Superdrag's "Sucked Out" video, which was about that same era... And there's a rock club that kind of resembles Emo's, but it's probably LA.

The best Houston reference has to be that they used a Gallery Furniture commercial in the background of the tv studio scene.

The movie really does a good job, though maybe a bit tritely, of showing the problems of our generation getting out of college and finding jobs. My first job out of college was at Walmart (and not in management), so I knew the feeling well.

I wish there were a lot more movies that featured Houston and its amazing architecture.

Jason

Lots of 'em.

Near the beginning of the movie is a shot from on top of a downtown skyscraper (the old Tenneco building, I think) which shows off the surrounding buildings very nicely. There's a scene in Tranquility Park, another driving down Allen Parkway - there's no mistaking that this movie was shot in Houston.

That being said, I read somewhere that the interior shots were done in Hollywood.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Gary]

yeah, kinda funny how after the 'fued' the place burned down.  very interesting...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Sorry that I missed this one at the beginning of the month but Being very close to this I had to comment.

I am very good friends with Greg Gilley (Mickey's son) and I was at the Gilley home the night Gilley's burned down. In fact I was in the kitchen messing around with the spider monkey they had when the call came. Mickey cussed a little and then started off on how he knew Sherwin Cryer had hired somebody to destroy the place. Of course it was because he and Mickey did not get along at all and the club at that point was not doing as well as it had in the past. Anyway I heard it straight from the horses mouth.

This is a true story.

[bruce_oneal]

Sorry that I missed this one at the beginning of the month but Being very close to this I had to comment.

I am very good friends with Greg Gilley (Mickey's son) and I was at the Gilley home the night Gilley's burned down. In fact I was in the kitchen messing around with the spider monkey they had when the call came. Mickey cussed a little and then started off on how he knew Sherwin Cryer had hired somebody to destroy the place. Of course it was because he and Mickey did not get along at all and the club at that point was not doing as well as it had in the past. Anyway I heard it straight from the horses mouth.

This is a true story.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

i DO NOT want to know what a spider monkey was doing in the KITCHEN!!!

[bruce_oneal]

anybody planning watch 14 hours? it was supposedly a true story that took place during/after hurricane allison. based on events here in houston.

[debmartin]

i checked in on this and it was just too cheesy. btw, wasn't allison a tropical storm instead of a hurricane? i'm not even sure what the exact difference is, something about the strength of the winds, but when making the movie it would have been better if they had gotten that right. probably whoever made the movie felt tropical storm did not sound as serious and took the liberty of upgrading the storm to hurricane. also i read that a family is suing herman hospital because their child died - it seems some patients were evacuated and some were not - and the hospital did not include the child in the first wave of patients moved. very tragic, and no way i would want the responsibility of making the decision of who to move and in what order. i only hope those in charge of the med center facilities learned from this horrible event and a better emergency mgmt plan has been formulated should future flooding occur.

deb martin

[Houston19514]

i checked in on this and it was just too cheesy.  btw, wasn't allison a tropical storm instead of a hurricane?  i'm not even sure what the exact difference is, something about the strength of the winds, but when making the movie it would have been better if they had gotten that right.  probably whoever made the movie felt tropical storm did not sound as serious and took the liberty of upgrading the storm to hurricane.  also i read that a family is suing herman hospital because their child died - it seems some patients were evacuated and some were not - and the hospital did not include the child in the first wave of patients moved.  very tragic, and no way i would want the responsibility of making the decision of who to move and in what order.  i only hope those in charge of the med center facilities learned from this horrible event and a better emergency mgmt plan has been formulated should future flooding occur.

deb martin

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Are you saying you watched it and that in the show they mistakenly referredto the storm as a hurricane? I just went to the show's website and they repeatedly refer to Tropical Storm Allison and I cannot find the word hurricane anywhere. I meant to watch it last night but forgot :-( I'll have to try to catch it later this week.

[bruce_oneal]

Are you saying you watched it and that in the show they mistakenly referredto the storm as a hurricane?  I just went to the show's website and they repeatedly refer to Tropical Storm Allison and I cannot find the word hurricane anywhere.  I meant to watch it last night but forgot  :-(  I'll have to try to catch it later this week.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

clarification: EYE (bruce) used the word hurricane. i do not know if the word hurricane was actually used in the marketing or actual production script.

that being said, did it include ANY recognizable shots of houston? i tuned in for just about 10 minutes and they kept showing some generic looking building that was supposed to be the harris county emergency management office, but i wouldn't know what that building looks like if it sprang up in my apartment building's parking lot.

[debmartin]

when i said i "checked in" on it i meant i tuned in while it was in progress. i only watched about 20 minutes of it and yes, someone in the scene i was watching referred to the "hurricane". my fourteen year old son said it did not "look real" because they sent three skinny nurses down to the basement to fight waist high water to retrieve blood (he thought a few burly men would have been in order). when the bldg. maint. man called his supervisor at home to report the water coming in around the generators, he was told to "turn 'em off" which of course happened to be in the middle of open heart surgery. a lot of this really happened, since herman has surgery going on 24/7 and they were without generator power for some length of time. they kept showing a building that was supposed to be the hospital blacking out - a friend of mine said it was filmed in canada so i do not know if anything of houston was shown. they did mention distinct sections of the hospital, like cullen, robertson pavillion etc. it was a tragedy in real life but to me the film had too much of the 70's natural disaster flick effect - the music, the over dramatic expressions/exclaimations and of course the one jokester who keeps asking the nurses to go in the closet to fool around. probably most enjoyed by people outside of houston, who have no horror stories of their own to compare.

deb martin

[KimberlySayWhat]

That hospital they used looked like the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disney MGM and the baby on the ventilator looked like a horror movie prop.

[bruce_oneal]

according to wilkipedia this is a list of films filmed here. i totally forgot about logan's run.

*****

Houston in film and TV

Part or all of these movies/shows take place in Houston and/or the Houston area

* Brewster McCloud (1970) - first film to be filmed inside the Astrodome

* The Getaway (1972) - filmed in Huntsville, TX

* Sugarland Express (1974) - filmed on location at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice - Inmate Division Jester III Unit west of Sugar Land, TX

* Rollerball (1975) - Set in Houston but filmed in Bavaria, Germany

* Logan's Run (1976) - filmed inside the Houston Hyatt Regency

* Futureworld (1976) - filmed at the Johnson Space Center facilities

* Telefon (1977) - set in Houston but filmed on a Hollywood backlot, parts of Los Angeles and inside the Hyatt Regency located at 5 Embarcadero in San Francisco, California)

* The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)

* Murder At The World Series (1977) - made-for-TV film

* The Swarm (1978)

* Urban Cowboy (1980)

* Texas (1980-1982) - Daytime soap opera, a spinoff of Another World

* Murder In Texas (1981) made-for-TV film

* Student Bodies (1981)

* The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) - Character played by Dom DeLuise was based on KTRK personality Marvin Zindler

* Terms of Endearment (1982}

* Uncommon Valor (1983) - Set in Houston, filmed in California

* Cutter to Houston (1984)

* The Trip to Bountiful (1984) - Set in Houston but filmed in Dallas, Texas

* Houston Knights (1987-1988)

* My Best Friend Is A Vampire (1988)

* Cohen and Tate (1989)

* Night Game (1989) - filmed in Galveston, TX

* I Come In Peace (1990)

* Robocop 2 (1990)

* Sidekicks (1992)

* A Perfect World (1993) - Filmed in Hunstvile, Tx

* Jason's Lyric (1994)

* Reality Bites (1994)

* Thea (1994)

* Apollo 13 (1995)

* Independence Day (1996) - Houston is destroyed by a nuclear missile

* Tin Cup {1996) - Final tournament shot in Kingwood, Tx.

* The Evening Star (1996)

* Don't Look Back (1996) - filmed in Galveston, TX

* Armageddon (1998) - filmed at the Johnson Space Center facilities

* Rushmore (1998) - written and directed by Houstonian Wes Anderson and filmed at his alma mater - St. John's School

* Dance With Me (1998)

* Arlington Road (1999)

* 2000 WNBA Champions - Houston Comets (2000)

* Space Cowboys (2000)

* Reba (2001-) - set in Houston but filmed in Los Angeles

* Texas Justice (2001-) - Filmed in Houston

* Houston Medical (2002)

* The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth About Enron (2003)-Set in Houston, but filmed in Canada

* Animal Cops: Houston (2003)

* Friday Night Lights (2004) (In the book and real life events, the final game of the Permian High School Team is played at the University of Texas in Austin, not the Astrodome of Houston)

[Gary]

i DO NOT want to know what a spider monkey was doing in the KITCHEN!!!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You bet you don't. What's funny is that (the spider monkey) is still a topic of conversation among some old friends.

[skwatra]

i saw a sign yesterday in front of a restaurant on Main downtown that said "Filming in Progress"

i beleive it was Saba Blue Water Cafe, it was just south of F2's on the same side of Main.

anyone know what that may have been?

[KimberlySayWhat]

Maybe that new show "Laws of Chance" based on Kelly Seigler (though the title character is named Chance from what I understand). They were filming downtown at Treebeards the week before last. I thought they had already wrapped location shooting for now, though. They picked a perfect time to film considering how gorgeous the whether has been lately in Houston.

[KimberlySayWhat]

A little more "Laws" info: they did some filming in Sealy and Waller. Francis Fisher ("Titanic") and Lou Dimond Philips have joined the cast.

Looks like maybe the show's star, KaDee Strickland became an Astros fan while filming out here. Here are some pics of her at a game:

http://www.wireimage.com/GalleryListing.as...vc=E&nvv=109349

[bruce_oneal]

A little more "Laws" info: they did some filming in Sealy and Waller. Francis Fisher ("Titanic") and Lou Dimond Philips have joined the cast.

Looks like maybe the show's star, KaDee Strickland became an Astros fan while filming out here. Here are some pics of her at a game:

http://www.wireimage.com/GalleryListing.as...vc=E&nvv=109349

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

if she can help the astros start WINNING games (consistently) again i am all for it.

[bruce_oneal]

this year's winner of the amazing race --Uchenna and Joyce Agu-- are from houston. not sure if they did any pre-race background of houston as i LOATHE reality shows.

[bruce_oneal]

did anyone mention 'giant'

[RedScare]

The "Laws" series (I went to law school with Kelly Seigler, BTW) filmed at Berryhill in the Heights, Columbia Street (also Heights), Market Square Grill, Mercury Room, among others.

Didn't "Paris, Texas" have some scenes set in Houston? I seem to remember one where the guy was talking to a girl who worked at a seedy whorehouse, or something. Not sure where it was filmed, but it reminded me of Telephone Road.

[citykid09]

i forgot to add the other day I was watching Nickelodean, and lil Romeo has a mini series on there called "The Team" Any was it was taped in Houston (Lil Romeos Home town) But he brought his basketball team from Los Angeles Where thier main family house is.

[Original Timmy Chan's]

Didn't "Paris, Texas" have some scenes set in Houston?  I seem to remember one where the guy was talking to a girl who worked at a seedy whorehouse, or something.  Not sure where it was filmed, but it reminded me of Telephone Road.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I think the last half of Paris Texas was filmed in Houston. I know there's a lot of scenes filmed in downtown...the motor bank across Franklin St from the Brewery Tap (aka the old Magnolia Brewery) is featured in a scene. There are also some scenes from a peep show theatre, which was also downtown. All I remember from those scenes are the backs of some downtown buildings, which I didn't recognize. I'm sure some of you downtown geeks would know exactly which buildings they were.

I believe the beginning of Paris Texas was filmed down in Big Bend...Terlingua or Lajitas maybe?