(rshsdepot) Hollywood & Toronto Union Station

[Derek Boles <derekboles_@_rogers.com>]

Toronto Union Station has long been a popular venue for the filming 
of movies, television shows, commercials and music videos. Partly 
this is due to the monumental scale of the photogenic Great Hall, 
used to great effect in the 1976 comedy/thriller "Silver Streak," 
starring Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.

In recent years, many movies have been filmed in the mostly 
unoccupied west wing of Union Station. Since this space is not 
familiar to the general public, it's often not easy to identify the 
location when viewing these films. In the 2006 crime drama "16 
Blocks," starring Bruce Willis, the third floor of the west wing was 
used to represent a New York City police station. Evidence of the 
filming still exists with NYPD decals attached to various doors and 
others labeled in black letters indicating NARCOTICS and COMMUNITY 
AFFAIRS. Part of the attraction of this venue for Hollywood producers 
has to do with the fact that the third floor still retains its basic 
1920 configuration with a long hallway and long abandoned 
architectural features such as transoms over the doorways.

The most popular attraction for Hollywood, however, is the fact that 
the third floor of the west wing is an otherwise publicly 
inaccessible huge space where the filmmakers can work undisturbed. 
The most recent movie to be filmed there is "Talk To Me," which has 
already been released in selected American cities and will be opening 
in Toronto on July 27.

The movie stars Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda) as a 1960s ex-convict who 
becomes a popular disk jockey at a Washington R&B radio station at 
the time of the U.S. race riots that followed the assassination of 
civil rights leader Martin Luther King. The film has received 
positive reviews and is based on a true story. Cheadle's character 
Petey Greene is generally regarded as one of the first talk radio 
"shock jocks" that have become so popular in recent years. The movie 
also stars Martin Sheen (U.S. President Josiah Bartlet in the 
ironically titled West Wing television series) as the beleaguered 
manager of radio station WOL. Sheen's office in the movie was filmed 
inside a former Canadian Pacific Railway vice president's office that 
still has the initials WOL prominently displayed on the doorway.

All of these locations, by the way, can be seen on our monthly public 
tours of Union Station, the next of which will be held on July 28.

Derek Boles
Toronto Railway Historical Association
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org
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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #1577
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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org