NOT for the first time, Glasgow and its distinctive architecture have beguiled filmmakers and location directors involved in big-budget Hollywood movies.
Speaking to the Herald this week, Duncan Broadfoot, Supervising Location Manager on the latest Indiana Jones film, which includes a large-scale scene shot in Glasgow, said that studios were attracted by two factors — Glasgow's striking resemblance to big American cities, and the willingness of the local authority to work with film crews.
Indiana Jones: Location chief explains Glasgow's starring role
“Glasgow looks like a Victorian New York, Boston or San Francisco. The city centre primarily has Victorian architecture with red and blonde sandstone and the streets are laid out in a grid system which is very similar to most US cities. So aesthetically it ticks most of the boxes.”
“Architectural styles aside, Glasgow City Council offer huge support for filming. There’s only a handful of cities in the UK which would enable the levels of control required for such a shoot. That, as well, is a draw. But first and foremost it’s the architectural style.”
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which stars Harrison Ford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, joins a stellar cast-list of films that were shot in Glasgow.
Its city locations included Cochrane Street, which back in 2011 was, together with George Square and another adjacent street, transformed to resemble Philadelphia for World War Z, a zombie apocalypse thriller starring Brad Pitt and directed by Marc Forster.
Large crowds of onlookers gathered each day of the shoot to see scenes being set up and filmed - and also in the hope of catching a glimpse of Pitt. "It was good at first, but it did get annoying later", said the owner of a bridal shop on Montrose Street. "We had people come in saying they wanted an appointment for a fitting, but it was just so they could get past the barriers and look out our window."
Why Brad Pitt brought World War Z to Glasgow
The opening minutes of the film capture the fear and panic that set in when people realise that they are in reanimated corpses are among them and are multiplying unstoppably. The scene ends with a gripping aerial shot of hundreds of people fleeing for their lives across George Square.
"Frantic crowds pelt down the road, street signs quiver and big yellow taxis look very small indeed in the face of a zombie-led onslaught", the Herald began its review in 2013. "Kudos to Marc Forster ... for turning the streets around George Square in Glasgow into the dead spit of downtown Philadelphia".
No sooner had the World War Z crew departed than the city welcomed another crew, this one involved in the making of Cloud Atlas, directed by the Wachowski brothers - creators of The Matrix - and based on David Mitchell's award-winning novel.
Cloud Atlas used the city's grand architecture and grid system street layout to stand in for San Francisco. David Brown, the film's Scottish line producer, told the Herald: "In addition to a positive approach and its position as the gateway to the rest of Scotland, the city's architecture and classic grid system makes it uniquely appealing".
Agenda: Cashing in on the chance to sell Scotland through the movies
Another high-profile film that was shot in the streets of Glasgow's largest city was Under the Skin (2013), by director Jonathan Glazer.
As the Glasgow Film Festival put it earlier this year, when publicising a special screening in March complete with live orchestra: "Shrouded in mystery, Scarlett Johansson is a sleek alien temptress, haunting the streets of a raucous and very real Glasgow. Glazer’s sci-fi parable muses lithely from perspectives of immigration, to loneliness, to the very fabric of humanity, between cinematic rhythms of perfect perplexity".
Glazer told how Johansson spent weeks undercover driving around Glasgow in full costume picking up strangers, who signed a release to give permission for taking part in the film.
A key moment in 1917, Sam Mendes's immersive, Oscar-winning First World War film, was shot at the old Graving Docks in Govan.
Dock from war film 1917 to be given new lease of life through restoration
Movies as diverse as Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Red Road, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, and Fast & Furious 6 have all made use of Glasgow locations, as have Terence Davies's House of Mirth, Bill Forsyth's Comfort and Joy and Ken Loach's Angel's Share and My Name is Joe, amongst countless others.
The 2019 book, Scotland Film Locations, is a handy reminder of some of the many others. For the 2016 film Florence Foster Jenkins, for instance, the city's West End became 1940s New York, with Meryl Streep in the title role. And the city stood in for Stockholm in the 2017 film, The Wife, which starred Glenn Close and Jonathan Pryce.
French film-maker Bertrand Tavernier caused a stir in Glasgow in the summer of 1979 as he worked on his latest project, Death Watch.
Harvey Keitel starred as a journalist who has a camera implanted in his eye (the studio reportedly favoured Richard Gere for the role taken by Keitel) and is hired by a TV producer to secretly film Romy Schneider, a writer who is terminally ill.
Herald journalist William Hunter, arising early one morning, spotted seven lorries full of film-making and television equipment lurking in Sauchiehall Street.
“I fell in love with the city, I think it was the end of a morning in 1977,” Tavernier, 71, told The Skinny in an interview in 2012.
“I wanted a certain kind of urban destruction, an urban beauty. The tremendous beauty of some of those streets, the atmosphere: you had a feeling of what it had been like twenty years, forty years, a century ago. It was a city of the working class, and that leaves scars, that leaves memories, which are very strong and it’s why I wanted to set the film there.”
Apart from its artistic merit the film is notable for the way in which it captures the often-grimy Glasgow of the late Seventies.
Not every film shot and set in Glasgow, of course, has the luxury of well-appointed backstage facilities.
American Cousins, a romantic feel-good comedy with a thriller edge, is a case in point. In case you've forgotten it, or haven't seen it (in either case, it is well worth digging out the DVD), the film - directed by Donald Coutts from a screenplay by Sergio Casci - has two American mafiosi making their way to Glasgow, there to hide out in a cafe run by their Scots-Italian cousin, played by Gerald Lepkowski. It has a fine cast: Lepkowski, Danny Nucci, Dan Hedaya, Shirley Henderson, Vincent Pastore.
They've gone and put him in movies
In an entertaining interview with the Herald in January 2002, Coutts was talking to the journalist, voicing his opinion about various matters.
"Coutts", the journalist wrote, "is striding manfully beside me through the grimy streets of Govanhill - no limo for Mr Coutts - to the film's lunch wagon, which is pitched on a rubbish-strewn fly-tipper's paradise near Eglinton Street". Nor was Coutts above nipping out to the shops to buy some props.
Not too many Hollywood stars or directors, you suspect, would have put up with that - though Bertrand Tavernier was said to have been based in a £15-a-night single room in the old Central Hotel during the Death Watch shoot.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here