Johnny’s Hideaway, the swinging Buckhead nightspot, makes a notable cameo in the 2011 movie Hall Pass. The Farrelly Brothers set their raunchy comedy in New England but filmed most of it here. An establishing shot shows Johnny’s from out front, then segues indoors (Sinatra Room, King’s Corner, anyone?) as suburban dads Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis spectacularly fail to pick up women.
Hall Pass’ guest appearance shows how Atlanta lends local color to film production on an almost subliminal level. Although movies and TV series are shot here in increasing numbers, Atlanta often doubles as someplace else or provides interiors for films shot on location: The fifth Fast and the Furious, for instance, took place in Rio de Janeiro and shot most outdoor scenes in Puerto Rico, but filmed interiors and some urban streetscapes here.
Anchorman 2, the 1970s’ Will Ferrell comedy, did transform the city, briefly. West Midtown’s Olympic Flame restaurant became Whammy Chicken!, a fast-food franchise from sportscaster Champ Kind. The flick gave Peachtree Center an ice-skating rink a la New York’s Rockefeller Center. And it closed Manuel’s Tavern for a day. As general manager Brian Maloof wrote on the pub’s Facebook wall, “They needed some additional props from the ’70s for the time-period shoot and we had them in storage. I overheard a guy say, ‘It is nice we do not need to change many things for this ’70s shot.’ I am not sure how to take that. :-)”
Atlanta has become so popular that some productions must shoot around each other to use a prized spot. The Georgia Archives Building across from the Capitol is state-owned but popular for its versatility, says Lee Thomas, director of the Georgia Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office. Both Identity Thief (with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Bateman) and Anchorman 2 used it.
The influx of film production shows Atlanta is more architecturally diverse than we might realize. Midtown’s Biltmore Hotel became New York’s Waldorf Astoria in the Jackie Robinson biopic 42. Georgia Tech imitated Google headquarters for the Vince Vaughn/Owen Wilson comedy The Internship. The Georgia State Capital became an abandoned hotel for an action scene in the post-industrial America of NBC’s “Revolution.” (Perhaps the most incongruous match of subject matter and location is CBGB, an upcoming film about the legendary 1970s punk nightclub, being shot in Savannah.)
Filming can happen almost anywhere. Castleberry Hill has been the site for Scary Movie 5, Identity Thief, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, MTV’s “Teen Wolf” and Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confession of a Marriage Counselor, which filmed in a 12,000-square-foot loft.
Atlanta’s intown neighborhoods are known for their diverse architecture. Location scouts can tell from the curb which houses can pass as homes from specific generations. “We see a lot of productions go into Inman Park, Druid Hills and the Pullman Yards on Roger Street,” says Thomas. “But it’s spread out a lot more than usual. We see period stories like Lawless and Get Low shot in the mountains. We’ve got plenty of zombie apocalypse stuff, and a lot of The Hunger Games is shot here.”
Perhaps the most eagerly awaited Atlanta production this year, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (due Nov. 22) used the Goat Farm as impoverished District 12, home of Jennifer Lawrence’s plucky heroine. Originally a complex of 19th- century industrial buildings, the Goat Farm can pretty easily be made to resemble another century, or a landscape after the fall of civilization as we know it. Catching Fire also used Buckhead’s Swan House mansion and grounds to convey the opulence of the decadent Capital.
Perhaps no Atlanta location of recent years has been more iconic than Freedom Parkway, thanks to the gridlocked, apocalyptic scene from the pilot episode of “The Walking Dead,” which became the cover of the first season DVD. The “Dead” also walked through downtown’s Fairlie-Poplar district and the Cobb Energy Center, which stood in for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Most recently, “The Walking Dead” filmed much of its third season in Senoia (population 3,307), where businesses like the Main Street Fudge Shop capitalize on their new fame with “zombie fudge” and “Woodbury” mugs in honor of the fictional stronghold against the undead.
The influx of film production has made “spot the celebrity” one of Atlanta’s favorite games. Robin Williams did a set at the Laughing Skull, Dakota Fanning celebrated her 19th birthday at STK, Reese Witherspoon got a DUI on Peachtree and, in the coolest appearance of all, Kevin Bacon appeared at Dad’s Garage Theatre’s BaconFest fundraiser a year ago. Owen Wilson, apparently turns up everywhere, from the High Museum of Art to the city’s hippest restaurants, so he’s seeing a lot more than Johnny’s Hideaway these days.
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Atlanta-based film and theater writer Curt Holman has won awards for his critical writing from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia and the Society of Professional Journalists. In 2005, he was a National Endowment for the Arts fellow in theater and musical theater.
