Fluffernutter at the Movies: Scene the Setting
I got an e-mail from a friend of mine recently. He was at a Belgian airport, on his way to Liberia via Casablanca.
“Casablanca? Cool!” I e-mailed him back.
Not really, he answered, he would just be at the airport for a few hours.
Even still, it seemed to me. What a wonderful airport. A small one, the way they used to make them, and you could walk on the tarmac to your waiting tri-prop.
Except, of course, Casablanca is a modern metropolis of almost 3-million people, 7.5-million if you include the suburbs. That’s right, that city so small everybody knew everybody else in the Bogart classic has suburbs.
It’s funny how a movie can lock a place into time. The airport in the movie Casablanca was shot on a stage-screen, the plane that Ilsa and Victor Laslo got on was made of cardboard. But 75-years later, when I mentioned my friend would be at the Casablanca airport, isn’t that what you pictured?
It’s the same if you go to Tiffany’s. While the upper floors are all thoroughly modern, with sleek chrome and glass styling, street level has high ceilings, wood floors and large elegant wooden display cases, the same display cases you know from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Tiffany’s is, at first glance, exactly as Holly Golightly found it when she got the mean reds.
That is likely no accident. Tiffany’s and company know a part of their sterling reputation comes from the movie, and they have left the face of the store exactly as it was. Captured on film, frozen in time.
Likewise the marquis on Radio City Music Hall is as it’s been since Martin Scorsese was re-imagining the 50’s in the 70’s movie The Godfather. The same blue sign with the same red lettering. Say what you will, but appearing in an iconic film certainly saves you the cost of rebranding every half decade.
Of course, if you manage an airport in Morrocco, rebrand is exactly what you want to do.
Recent Comments