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Saturday March 6th 2004 12:57 AM PST
So i ended up watching Escape from New York on IFC tonight. Widescreen and Uncut. Anyway... Jen had never seen the movie, and we caught it right at the opening credits, so we ended up watching all of it. I just always find it really funny to see all the scenes in the "prison headquarters". All the interior shots are shot in various hall locations inside Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. The major control room scenes are actually the old automotive design area of the school where they had the shops were students built model cars. The amount of set decoration in a few spots is alright. They must have trucked in a few boxes with blinking lights on them, but other than that the rooms and hallways are exactly as if you were on your way to class.

side note: when i took classes there in my high school days i remember the entire building just being black and white. I later learned in college that the design style that gave rise to the ALL of the design in the college was the "Swiss School" of design. Black and White and Helvetica. (usually in knockout (white)) So i always laugh during this one scene of Escape because they're just walking down some nondescript hallway. About halfway down the hallway there is a black box on the wall that contains a Fire Extinguisher. When i was walking to class one day there i noticed that someone had taken the time to strip the letters off ALL of the boxes and replace them PERFECTLY with letraset rub-on letters. For a couple months all the Fire Extinguishers on one entire side of the school read "SOUL EXTINGUISHER". So if you're sitting with me watching this movie.... now i won't have to explain when i start to laugh uncontrollably.

Now the even more interesting part is that the scenes of the ground floor of the world trade center are actually filmed in the main gallery of CalArts. Steve invited us up many a time for weekend parties at CalArts, and in most cases the set designers had gone all out making the gallery into some incredible designed set to have the party in. Its just funny that this main gallery space has been used for so many movies and TV shows over the years and John Carpenter just throws a bunch of trash in it, paints some graffiti on the walls, and puts a broken down car in the middle, and PRESTO... Its the world trade center.


Comments:
Monday March 8th 2004 01:51 PM PST
Cookie would be proud that you're giving props to his alma mater. Does anyone even say "props" anymore?
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