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World Film Locations Washington D.C.
By Katherine Larsen Intellect Ltd
Copyright © 2015 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-78320-456-4
CHAPTER 1
WASHINGTON D.C.
City of the Imagination
Text by KATHERINE LARSEN
* * *
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA has been an imaginary city from its inception. Pierre L'Enfant, hired by George Washington to design the new federal city, took European models and translated them to the vernacular of a new Republic. The government, rather than the president, would occupy the high ground – literally. There were to be grand boulevards and parks, but they would be open to all. Exclusion gave way to egalitarianism.
A new federal capital rising fully formed from the marshes and woodlands of land ceded by Maryland and Virginia in 1790 is a romantic conceit, and like most wonderful romances, completely, giddily impractical. The idealistic architect had to contend with the tight purse strings of the new government. His vision and their demands for compromise did not make for a happy union and they eventually parted ways. In that parting, L'Enfant laid the groundwork for the city of contradictions that remains to this day, a constant reminder that idealism is not always actionable, or even appreciated.
And yet, Washington has always been synonymous with the ideals upon which the country was founded, those contained in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and those engraved on the monuments that dot the cityscape – justice, freedom, equality, honour, truth. These are the ideals frequently championed in Hollywood films such as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra, 1939) and Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950). The Capra-esque hope of a system that works, despite occasional malfunctions in the machine of justice and freedom that we believe our government should be, is an infrequent component of more recent films – only dimly and sporadically realized. We place our faith in individual crusaders working outside the system – Cal Macaffrey (State of Play [Kevin Macdonald, 2009]) and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (All the President's Men [Alan J. Pakula, 1976]) – instead of in presidents who are unaware or uncaring at best (Gabriel Over the White House [Gregory La Cava, 1933]) and mildly psychotic at worst (Nixon [Oliver Stone, 1995) or in politicians more interested in gaining and keeping power than in the welfare of their constituents. And when this corruption gets to be too much for us, we have no choice but to satirize it (Dr. Strangelove [Stanley Kubrick, 1964], Wag the Dog [Barry Levinson, 1997], Dick [Andrew Fleming, 1999], In the Loop [Armando Iannucci, 2009]).
To many, Washington is its monuments, which both give and take meaning from the city. They are idealism embodied. And sometimes, they are a reminder of where we fall short. However, there is another city, a parallel D.C. that does not fit as nicely into the national narrative and that rarely makes it onto film.
The Washington of imagination and idealism may be 'the most important city in the world' (at least according to a series of ads for a local bank in the 1980s); however, for most who live here, the real Washington is a city without power. Residents have no real representation in Congress and for much of its history the city has been denied self-rule, remaining essentially a fief of the federal government. The city that is charged with holding up, indeed embodying, the ideals of Justice and Equality, is also a city that enforced Jim Crow laws (laws enforcing racial segregation passed in the South after the Civil War). Washington had always been a destination for freed African Americans since before the Civil War (this because it was not legal to stay in most southern states after gaining freedom). The city represented unprecedented opportunity and eventually became a relative haven for the black community.
But segregation, both de jure and de facto, was a fact of life in the nation's capital well into the twentieth century. In 1937 Alan Lomax, then in charge of the Library of Congress's Archive of Folk Music, invited the blues musician Lead Belly to Washington to record some of his songs for the Archive. Lead Belly and his wife Martha were prevented from staying with Lomax by the laws barring black people from entering white peoples' homes or hotels. Lead Belly's experience led him to compose 'Bourgeois Blues'(1938): 'I tell all the colored folks to listen to me / Don't try to find you no home in Washington, D.C.'. When Jeff Smith first goes to the Lincoln Memorial in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, a black man enters after him and together, they listen as a young boy reads the Gettysburg Address. This scene, which seems to embody 'equality', takes on a very different meaning when viewed against Lead Belly's experience in Washington and the everyday experience of the black population of the city at the time (1939).
In 1975, George Clinton and his funk band Parliament released their album Chocolate City, a tribute to the city and to African American culture in predominantly black cities at the time. From what we see of Washington on film, one would never know that it was (and still is, though the demographics are once again shifting) a predominantly black city. Except for the face of the occasional porter or train conductor, the black presence in D.C. was all but erased. This absence is somewhat rectified beginning in the 1980s, coinciding with the crack epidemic and a spike in crime and violence. D.C. Cab (Joel Schumacher, 1983) and Meteor Man (Robert Townsend, 1993) portray the 'mean streets' of Washington for laughs, while Good to Go (Blaine Novak, 1986) perhaps goes too far in the other direction by overplaying the violence as mindless and animalistic. More realistic portrayals of the black experience in Washington are offered by Slam (Marc Levin, 1998) and Life of a King (Jake Goldberger, 2013). However, films such as these are few and far between. More recently films such as The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) and Talk to Me (Kasi Lemmons, 2007) have addressed life in black D.C. without situating themselves in the city itself. We are told we are in Washington, but there is little evidence of this. Washington remains a city of the imagination, a largely white imagination dominated by the government that casts such a large shadow over the landscape.
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964)
LOCATION
Dulles Airport, 1 Saarinen Cir, Dulles, VA
A COLD WAR CAUTIONARY TALE, the film, set in the near future, posits what happens when charismatic military leader General Scott (Burt Lancaster), in tandem with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, seeks to shape policy via a military takeover of the government. John Kennedy, president at the time of filming, felt the scenario plausible enough that he wanted the film made, even facilitating filming in front of the White House by going to his home in Hyannis for a weekend. In this scene the president, who has been alerted to Scott's plans by Colonel Jiggs Casey (Kirk Douglas), has dispatched Senator Raymond Clark (Edmund O'Brian) to Texas to locate a military base and the secret army unit known only as ECOMCON, which is set to seize control of the nation's communications systems at the start of the coup. While there, Clark is detained and escapes with the aid of Colonel Mutt Henderson (Andrew Duggan) who stands in opposition to the coup. Together Clark and Henderson fly back to Washington, arriving at the newly finished and somewhat 'futuristic' looking Dulles airport. Clark leaves Henderson momentarily to place a phone call to the president to let him know he has returned with proof of the plot, asking Henderson for a dime to make the call. When he returns, Henderson has disappeared. Katherine Larsen
DEEP IMPACT (1998)
LOCATION
Georgetown Waterfront
DEEP IMPACT successfully portrays normal lives lived on the national stage that is Washington, and then lives lived bravely under the threat, visible in the sky each night, of impending doom. To tell these stories, director Mimi Leder filmed some key scenes outside 'official' Washington – the White House, the Capitol Building and the government agencies bordering the Mall. Three such scenes were shot on the Georgetown Waterfront, on K Street between Wisconsin Avenue and 28th Street. In the first, the young TV producer/ researcher, Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) and her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) share lunch on a restaurant terrace with a clear view of the Kennedy Center. In the second, pictured here, Lerner's car is boxed in by unmarked black vehicles on the Francis Scott Key Bridge when she returns to Washington from the bayside Virginia town, where she had interviewed a cabinet secretary who had just resigned his post. In the third, shot in the kitchen below the terrace table at which she and her mother had earlier dined, Lerner meets President Beck (Morgan Freeman) and learns that what she had thought was the name of a mistress, Ellie, is an acronym, ELE (Extinction Level Event). This is the pivotal moment when normal life becomes a thing of the past. Using unofficial Washington to make these plot points allowed Leder to tell a realistic story about lives lived in a place often regarded, even by its long-term inhabitants, as fictional. Michael Svoboda
THE EXORCIST (1973)
LOCATION
Dalgren Chapel, Georgetown University, 37th and O Street, NW
VOTED THE SCARIEST FILM OF ALL TIME by various media outlets, The Exorcist juxtaposes the tranquillity of Georgetown with the horrors of demonic possession; the privileged existence of actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) with the nightmare scenario into which they are suddenly and inexplicably plunged. The first half hour of the film presents us with a series of vignettes. It's Halloween and trick-or-treaters run through the streets. A pair of nuns walks by, their voluminous habits blown back by a strong wind. Chris hears noises in the attic that she attributes to rats. Regan mentions playing with a Ouija board with the assistance of the imaginary Captain Howdy. Father Karras (Jason Miller) visits his mother in New York and is asked for change by an old drunk in the subway. The passing train throws his face into a momentarily frightening light. Individually these moments do not add up to anything out of the ordinary. All this changes when a priest enters Dalgren Chapel on the Georgetown University campus to place baskets of flowers in front of the statues of Mary and Joseph. He has quite literally walked out of the sunlight and into the shadows as he walks across the courtyard to the chapel. The face of the Virgin Mary is foregrounded as the priest enters the chapel, kneels in front of the altar and then places the first basket. When he turns to cross to the statue of Mary however, he stops, horrified at what he failed to notice upon entering. The statue has been desecrated in a highly sexualized manner that foreshadows the possession of the innocent and virginal young girl. Katherine Larsen
THE EXORCIST III: LEGION (1990)
LOCATION
Streets bordering Georgetown University (N Prospect 36th and 37th Streets NW)
HAS A D.C. FILM been so eerie yet so visually remarkable? The stylish opening of William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist III puts us in familiar territory ('Georgetown, 1990') on the anniversary of Damien Karras's death. Father Dyer (Ed Flanders) walks across Prospect Street toward the steps, triggering his distressing memories. After a cut scene of Kinderman (George C. Scott) remembering Karras, Blatty returns to the steps at night and cues the famous score. Cinematographer Gerry Fisher cuts to a sharp upward angle of the Holy Trinity Church. After close-ups on set-pieces – including an open-eyed Jesus statue – the handheld shots continue outside. Shadows, a priest crossing the street, voice-over ('I have dreams. Of a rose. And falling down a long flight of steps') and a boy (James Burgess) holding a rose comprise this haunting 2:14 scene, which culminates in a point -of-view shot tumbling down the steps to simulate the famous death. The film cross-cuts from Father Dyer in church to police officers at the crime scene. Evil again darkens familiar places: the boathouse and Key Bridge. When the Altar Boy (Kevin Corrigan) asks about references to Karras in the Prayer for the Dead – 'Isn't he the one who died in a fall on those steps?' – Father Dyer only responds, 'Get lost, will ya?' We stay with him as he remembers; the film jump cuts to Karras crashing out of the window and down the steps. Thus concludes the smartest, most chilling seven minutes in this (or maybe any) D.C. film. Joseph Fruscione
ST. ELMO'S FIRE (1985)
LOCATION
C&O Canal, Georgetown
AT FIRST GLANCE this film seems an almost painfully dated paean to the 1980s and to the Brat Pack that dominated so many teenage films of the era. In truth it marks a moment of transition both for the characters in the film and for many of the actors who were making the change from playing disaffected high-schoolers to disaffected young professionals. In hindsight it is easy to dislike these over privileged white children refusing to grow up, but we were all refusing to grow up in the 1980s. Nineteen eighty-four was the year of the yuppie according to Newsweek, though by the following year the Wall Street Journal was already commenting on the backlash against a generation generally thought of as loathsome, self-involved individuals hyper-concerned with status and the trappings that signal that status. The characters in this film variously fit easily into, or react viscerally against this categorization. Alec Newbary (Judd Nelson) is perhaps closest to the yuppie 'ideal' – a materialistic social climber – while Jules (Demi Moore) represents the wretched excess ascribed to the group, living far beyond her means, partying too hard, drinking too much and doing far too much cocaine. On the other end of the spectrum, Wendy (Mare Winningham) has a low paying, unglamorous job as a social worker, yet lives in the affluent comfort and psychological safety of her parents' home. In this scene, Wendy and Leslie (Ally Sheedy) are walking along the C&O Canal in Georgetown, discussing Wendy's inability to move past her crush on Billy (Rob Lowe), the most undependable yet charismatic member of their group. When Wendy finally moves to a small and decidedly unglamorous apartment of her own, out from the control of her father, she becomes the real success story, the only one to put others before herself, to work for social good rather than monetary gain, and to have made clear breaks withher dependent past and, eventually, with Billy as well. Katherine Larsen
CHANCES ARE (1989)
LOCATION
3410 P Street NW
FILMS SUCH AS St. Elmo's Fire (Joel Schumacher, 1985), Heartburn (Mike Nichols, 1986) and Dick (Andrew Fleming, 1999) use Georgetown as shorthand for affluence. The Exorcist films (William Friedkin, 1973; William Peter Blatty, 1990) and Igby Goes Down (Burr Steers, 2002) use it as shorthand for the horrors that lurk behind those well-appointed facades. Chances Are uses Georgetown, seemingly, because it's pretty. Despite being about Washington lawyers and journalists this film has none of the grittiness of other films that focus on the same professions in Washington. Instead, Chances Are is filmed in the saturated colours of fantasy. The sun always shines over Georgetown, flowers bloom vibrantly, and every difficulty thrown at these characters is easily and amusingly resolved. Except, of course for the death of Corinne's (Cybil Shepherd) husband Louie (Christopher McDonald) within the first fifteen minutes of the film. This, and Corinne's unresolved grief over the loss of her soulmate, casts an ever so subtle patina of sadness over what is otherwise a series of romantic comedy mix-ups, with a small dose of the supernatural added for good measure. Through a series of chance encounters that give the film its title, the reincarnated Louie, now Alex and played by Robert Downey Jr., first meets his now grown daughter at college and his best friend Phillip (Ryan O'Neal) when applying for a job at the Washington Post. In this scene Louie/Alex is brought back 'home' by Philip, who has invited him to meet his friend Corinne and her daughter. Alex senses something strangely familiar when he sees the house and then comes face to face with a portrait of his former self upon entering. What were the chances? Katherine Larsen
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