Alex Churchill

The world has now served as the backdrop for movies for almost 100 years. From Central Park to Big Ben to countless locations in LA and Mumbai – thousands of lines of dialogue have been imprinted on our brains with the sites in the background anchoring them. And while people have been running up the “Rocky Steps” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and belting out “The hills are alive!!!” high above Salzburg, there are hundreds of other, smaller movie moments that are seldom repeated.

From Audrey Hepburn outside Tiffany’s (often repeated) to Harold and Kumar beginning their trek to White Castle outside their apartment building (hopefully, not often repeated), these are little moments that are woven into the consciousness of millions of people around the world. And while actors and directors have made entire careers on a single scene, most of the locations that co-starred (and the cities that are their custodians) have done very little to celebrate their part.

That’s a shame. And unnecessary. We have public art commemorating everything from the sacrifice of war to the citation of authors. Now that everyone has a camera with them at all times, isn’t is time we developed some public art dedicated to the craft of the camera? After all, how movie cameras see many places is how those places are defined.

It’s a simple idea. Where  scenes famous, kitschy or silly were shot, place a permanent tripod, in-ground dolly or just block of granite with a rudimentary camera mount and basic blocking instruction. Where the actors stood or walked we have positions and in the ground in front of them, their lines. We encourage passers-by to reenact the scenes and upload them to YouTube where we structure a license from the copyright holders that will allow views of the scene-reconstructions to generate ad revenues to pay for the installations. Of course, that trickle of pennies will some time to pay it all off, but what an off-the-top sponsorship opportunity for a big cinema chain, media or production company.

In my own city, Torontoist does a fine job of uncovering those – “Hey, I recognize that!” – hogtown moments with the excellent Reel Toronto feature. They run through movies shot in Toronto and tell you where and what each location is. Toronto is a city that often stands in for other places on film. For instance, that scene with Harold and Kumar was supposed to be New Jersey, but was actually shot in Toronto. And commemorating a silly scene from a pointless movie not even set in the city it was shot in meets what I see the point of this to be: to celebrate how cities have been framed in a viewfinder in a fun, interactive way.