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They didn't have to work too hard to make the North End look like the old days
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Dear Ben Affleck,
Please diversify your portfolio. Boston has more interesting things in its past, present, and future than organized crime. It's getting tedious.
Thanks Bennifer
This picture is interesting - the clothesline. How do you go about asking a neighbor across the street to share a clothesline...how do they string it....who has first dibs on using it....did they share it at the same time? A picture tells 1,000 words.
speaking of clotheslines ...
Where are the sheets? So many rooms to let and no sheets?
Something else is missing
There should be at least a dozen mens-undershirts-formerly-known-as-'wifebeaters.'
World needs plenty of
World needs plenty of bartenders!
I tried that, and you hated
I tried that, and you hated Gigli. So get excited for The Town 2: Space Saver Wars.
-Ben
Crime movies are usually the best movies...
Go on IMDB.com, look up the top 250 movies of all time, then look at the top 20. I'd say about 17-18 of those are Crime movies.....cough cough The Godfather..
Gone Baby Gone wasn't about organized crime, was it?
Crime, yes, but not exactly of the organized variety. It seems like Affleck pulls most of his source material from novels, so you may want to direct your criticism at Dennis Lehane, Chuck Hogan, and the like.
Where do they come up with
Where do they come up with these names for storefronts.
Hideously Inaccurate
In all of the old Boston photos featured on Universal Hub, solar clothes dryers are deployed on the roofs of buildings. You don't see them strung them between two different properties above a public street.
How could a laundress possibly operate this dryer? It's not even a pulley clothesline! She'd have to be twenty feet tall to hang clothes in the center.
Obviously
Sure they did
I've seen lots of photos of clotheslines strung between buildings in Boston. Google it.
Here's one as recent as 1975 in the North End:
(They would have had pulleys, but I can't tell if the ones for the film set have them or not.)
Clothesline poles
When I grew up in Boston neighborhoods in the 60s some people had poles resembling telephone poles with pulleys on them in their yards, for the express purpose of running a clothesline to them from a porch or window.
That was us
Pulleys were great. You could put them up anywhere. Trees, barns, etc. We had clotheslines well into the 70's. The fresh air smell of clothes cannot be beat. It saved energy and there was no pollution and was free. Now we need everything to be convenient. The price we pay!
Of course
Since I'm a uhub regular.. I'm looking at this picture and thinking it's not a movie (and present day), and I think...
OMG a clothes line? It's hideous. where is the neighborhood association? what do they think? Why haven't we had public meetings about it? What about those rooming houses? Where's the parking? Is that zoned properly? Can I get the minutes of the BRA meeting that approved that online?
And most of all.. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!
/sarcasm
(truthfully, I wish most places WOULD allow for clothes lines, it's so much more eco friendly, your clothes don't get ruined, and smell better!)
I wonder how many people not
I wonder how many people not realizing this is a setup for a movie have called to complain about it.
Great, possibly apocryphal, story RE Brinks Job location shoot
I used to work on the movies here and there was a great story RE the Brinks Job shoot.
Story goes that there was only one window air conditioner in the alley of the shoot. Location manager paid the owner 50 bucks to remove it.
Next day there were AC'c and cardboard boxes looking like AC's in every other window in the alley. Production had to pay em all!
And hey Elmer! It's willing suspension of disbelief! It's adorable!
Now wait a minute
I thought you didn't mix dark and light clothing in a single wash. I'll bet the movie director/producer never did a load of laundry.
The vinyl/aluminum
The vinyl/aluminum replacement windows, square galvanized sign posts, neon crosswalk signs, cable/DSL lines/conduit, and other misc. modern bits all over the place just scream Olde Tymey.
At least they didn't film this in Vancouver or some other generic Canadian city with 'Boston' accents straight out of Boise.
Location! Location! Location!
Thank goodness the story is set in the North End. If it had been in the West End, the CGI budget alone would have kept this project stuck in development hell.