Hollywood North Trivia Quiz

Answer:

While Vancouver may be the first Canadian filming site that springs to mind when you hear the phrase Hollywood North, due to the extensive publicity use of that phrase in relation to 'The X-Files' (including the somewhat controversial move to California for later seasons), Toronto has been increasingly popular as a location setting for films in urban settings, as the location costs are less than is the case for many American cities.

'Police Academy', a 1984 comedy that started a franchise (with several of the sequels also being filmed in Toronto), was inspired by an incident in San Francisco, but purposely set in a nameless city. For those in the know, a number of familiar Toronto landmarks can be seen, most notably the building used as the academy. The building, formerly used as a psychiatric hospital that closed in 1979, has been used since 1991 as part of the campus of Humber College. As well as being used to film several instalments of the 'Police Academy' films, it was used to film the 1977 film 'Equus', starring Richard Burton, and the Netflix program 'Locke & Key', first released in 2020.

There is an urban legend circulated about 'Three Man and a Baby', the 1987 comedy vehicle for Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg, and Ted Danson, that in one scene you can see the ghost of a boy who had once lived in the house, whose grieving parents left after he accidentally shot himself. Aside from the fact that the shadow was actually that of a prop which had accidentally been left in shot, all interior scenes of the film were shot on a Toronto sound stage, not in a New York City building.

Most of the Bill Murray tour-de-force 'Scrooged' was filmed in New York City and Los Angeles, but several exterior shots were filmed Toronto, as its cityscape is similar enough to that of NYC to make the less expensive process of shooting there rather than clearing the streets of the purported site of action viable. In this re-imagining of the classic Charles Dickens story 'A Christmas Carol', Scrooge has become Frank Cross, a ruthless television executive who is visited by four ghosts in the course of one night, with the expected dramatic impact on his attitude to life. Bill Murray's brother John makes a brief appearance as Frank's brother, while his older brother Brian has a cameo as their father.

A few years later, Bill Murray turned down the lead role in 'The Santa Clause', and the part went to Tim Allen. While much of the film was shot in Hollywood at the Raleigh Studios, exteriors used the Ontario town of Oakville (part of the Greater Toronto Area) to represent the city of Lakeside, Illinois where Scott Calvin resided before he accidentally killed Santa and had to take his place. The deer in the film came from the Toronto Zoo.

Principal shooting for 'Billy Madison' took place in Toronto between June and August of 1994. The mansion in which the title character, a 27-year-old forced to repeat grades 1-12 in order to inherit his family's fortune (played by Adam Sandler), resided was composed of three different locations: the exterior of the building and its grounds were the Parkwood Estate; the entrance hall was the Marylake Augustinian Monastery; the interior rooms were in the Gothic castle Casa Loma.

You might expect 'Murder at 1600', a thriller about the murder of a young girl in the White House (part of a convoluted plot to force the president to resign), to be shot in and around Washington DC. Indeed, some footage was filmed there, but the principal sites were in and around Toronto. At Cinespace Film Studios in nearby Kleinburg, a reconstruction of the Oval Office was constructed for this film which was later used in other films, such as 'The Sentinel' (2006). In 2015, however, the premises were turned into a centre for baseball training.

Will Hunting (Matt Damon) may be a janitor at MIT, but the interior shots of 'Good Will Hunting' were filmed in Toronto, with the Boston area used for exteriors and a few interiors, such as the scenes in the L Street Tavern. Several buildings of the University of Toronto were used, and Professor Patrick O'Donnell of the University of Toronto had a small role in the film, as well as providing advice on the accuracy of the mathematics on display.

The 1998 telemovie version of 'The Taking of Pelham One Two Three' used Toronto Transit company's subway system, unlike the 1974 version (which used an abandoned station on the IND line for its filming) and the 2009 remake (which used Grand Central Station as well as the same Fulton St site). The subway train carriages were outdated Toronto carriages modified to look like those of the NYC system. This adaptation is said to be the closest to the three to the original book, with Vincent D'Onofrio playing the hijacker of a NYC subway who is holding its passengers to ransom, and Edward James Olmos the police officer who is trying to track him down.

The 2000 film 'American Psycho', based on a horror novel written by Brett Ellis, is set in New York City, but NYC was used only for a few exterior shots to establish the well-known city scape, and most filming took place in Toronto. The filming actually created quite a stir, because there was a Toronto-based serial murderer and rapist during the 1980s who actually owned the novel, and locals were unhappy to have their city associated with the film. In fact, scenes in the office of Patrick Bateman (the serial killer portrayed by Christian Bale) ended up being filmed on a sound stage rather than in the office building that had been the plan.

The reclusive title character of 'Finding Forrester', played by Sean Connery, lives in the Bronx, and principal photography took place in various parts of New York City, but the scenes set inside Forrester's apartment were filmed in Toronto. Post-production pick-up shots were made in the suburbs of Toronto, as well as in nearby Hamilton, where the TD Coliseum stood in for Madison Square Garden.

Filming for 'Death to Smoochy' started in New York City in January of 2001, and there is a shot in the film that includes the North Tower of the World Trade Center that was to be destroyed later in that year. Before then, filming had moved to Canada, where the scenes set in the KidNet Studio were actually filmed in Toronto's Canadian Broadcasting Centre. Robin Williams stars as the maniacal 'Rainbow' Randolph Smiley, a children's TV presenter who is determined to oust his replacement, who has a puppet sidekick named Smoochy the Rhino.

'Resident Evil' started as a video game, before being the inspiration of a series of live-action horror movies designed as prequels to the game. The 2002 film was originally titled 'Resident Evil: Ground Zero', but its title was shortened following the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. The second instalment, 'Resident Evil: Apocalypse', used various sites around Toronto to replicate Raccoon City, where Alice (Milla Jovovich) flees after escaping from the zombies who invaded the underground research facility where she was being held at the end of the first film. Actual city locations were used, with very few film sets; the climax occurs outside Toronto City Hall.

'Hollywoodland' was originally titled 'Truth, Justice, and the American Way' before running into copyright issues over using that title for a film about a private detective (Adrien Brody) investigating the life and death of George Reeves (Ben Affleck), best known to most for his portrayal of the title character in 'The Adventures of Superman' on American television between 1952 and 1958. Filming took place primarily in and around Toronto, where selected suburbs stood in for Los Angeles in the 1950s. The Parkwood Estate, a National Historic Site and one of Toronto's most popular spots for filming movies (and shooting ads), was one of the featured locations.

It is a sign of the growth of Canada's film industry that Guillermo del Toro chose to film 'The Shape of Water' entirely in the Toronto area. Maybe the story of Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) a cleaner in a high-security government lab who falls in love with a captured Amphibian Man (Doug Jones) and resolves to free him takes place in Baltimore, but Toronto was able to supply virtually all necessary shots. For example, the interior of the Orpheum movie theatre was replicated using the Elgin & Wintergarden Theatres (self-described as the world's last operating stacked theatre); its exterior was provided by the Victorian Massey Hall; Elisa's flat, located above the Orpheum, was filmed on a set constructed in Cinespace's West Toronto studio.

The last film in this list is possibly a bit of a cheat, since it is not the first well-known adaptation of Stephen King's novel 'It', and the 1997 television miniseries was filmed in Vancouver. To avoid confusion, while the movie's official title was simply 'It', I have used the title shown onscreen, 'It Chapter One', which indicates that it was the first of two movies planned to cover the story. (Do I really need to tell you about the confrontation between Pennywise and the seven members of the Losers Club? If so, please go read the book!) Set in the fictitious town of Derry, Maine, it was filmed on location in the Greater Toronto Area, primarily the town of Port Hope. Rouge National Urban Park, in the suburb of Scarborough, became the Barrens.