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CREDITS |
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"This
isn't going to have a happy ending." says Detective
Lt. William Somerset (Morgan
Freeman), as the body count mounts in David
Fincher's grimly atmospheric thriller.
But it nearly did have. There was a struggle with the
studio to keep screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker's dark
vision. It took Brad
Pitt's threat to walk away from the project to keep
the nasty secret of the box.
The dismal, rainswept city where detectives Somerset
and Mills (Freeman
and Pitt) track
down a serial killer, left deliberately vague in the
movie, is neither New York nor Philadelphia, as has
been claimed.
It’s downtown Los
Angeles, with filming screened from the California
sun, and rain machines in overdrive.
The police HQ (a frequent filming site, seen in John
Woo's Face/Off)
is the third floor of the Pacific
Electric Building, 610 South Main Street
at Sixth Street.
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Se7en:
Somerset researches in the library: 650 South
Spring Street, downtown LA |
The gloomy library in which ever-diligent Somerset bones
up on the Seven Deadly Sins is the old disused Bank
of America building at 650
South Spring Street. Another really familiar
location, seen in films as diverse as John
Schlesinger's Marathon
Man, Ghost,
manic Jim Carrey
comedy The Mask,
Prizzi’s Honor,
St Elmo’s Fire
and Spider-Man
2, and it’s also the law firm office where
Lily Tomlin jumps into the body of Steve
Martin in All Of Me.
A way to the west, in midtown, is the ‘safe house’
in which the widow of the ‘Greed’ victim is
ensconced, which was one of the bungalows of the old Ambassador Hotel, 3400 Wilshire
Boulevard at Catalina Street. The hotel,
seen in films from the 1954 A
Star Is Born to The
Graduate and S.W.A.T.,
used in latter years only as a movie set, was demolished
in early 2006.
Back in the heart of downtown, John Doe’s place,
where the killer narrowly escapes, is only a few blocks
away, the Alexandria Hotel,
218 West Fifth Street at the southwest corner
of South Spring Street. The Alexandria
was once one of LA's
great luxury hotels, with the likes of Enrico Caruso,
Sarah Bernhardt, Douglas Fairbanks, WC Fields and Rudolph
Valentino among its guests. Today it's a welfare hotel.
The subsequent rainswept chase was filmed on West
Fifth Street.
The day I went to photograph the Alexandria,
I woke up to find the dependably blue LA
sky a dark, leaden grey. By the time I arrived downtown,
the heavens opened and rain gushed down. Now, that was
creepy. It made for a great picture, though.
Incidentally, the 'JR Electronic' storefront in the
picture used to be Torchy's
Bar, a frequently-used film location
– it was the 'San Francisco' redneck bar where Eddie Murphy
pulls rank in 48 Hours.
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Se7en:
Tracy reveals she's pregnant: Quality Coffee
Shop, West Seventh Street, downtown LA |
Tracy Mills (Gwyneth
Paltrow) reveals she’s pregnant to Somerset
in the Quality Coffee Shop,
1238 West Seventh Street, which you might
remember from the 2000 remake of Gone
In 60 Seconds, Training
Day and Ghost World.
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Se7en:
The
'Sloth' victim wastes away: Pan-Am Building, Third Street,
downtown LA |
The apartment of the comatose ‘Sloth’ victim
is in the Pan-Am Building,
Third Street at South Broadway, seen also
in Blade Runner and
just across from that movie’s most famous location,
the Bradbury Building.
More recently, the Pan-Am
became the apartment of John Constantine (Keanu
Reeves) in Constantine.
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Se7en location: "What's in the box?": powerlines on I Street, Lancaster |
The ending is out in the desert way north of LA. The area of high-tension lines can be found on I Street just east of 110th Street, west of Lancaster.
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