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The Usual Suspects location:
meeting with Redfoot: Korean Bell of Friendship, Angels Gate Park,
South Gaffey Street, San Pedro
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THE USUAL SUSPECTS
filming locations |
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CREDITS |
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Five
criminals. One line up. No coincidence.
With
that simple tagline and the iconic poster, Bryan
Singer's dazzling, convoluted who-dun-what puzzle
grabbed your attention. And when you saw the film,
you were glad it did. Like David
Lynch's Mulholland
Drive and Richard
Kelly's Donnie
Darko, it's one of those films you want to
watch over and over.
Set in New York
and Los Angeles,
it was made almost entirely on the west coast.
The exterior of Suzy Amisís law office is indeed Manhattan’s Flatiron Building, 175 Fifth Avenue (the ‘Daily
Bugle’ office in Spider-Man);
the NYPD ‘taxi service’ drives high-ranking
smuggler (Paul Bartel, director of cult favourite Death
Race 2000) across the Verrazano
Narrows Bridge (famous from Saturday
Night Fever), linking Brooklyn
to Staten Island;
and a few shots of the raid on the NY
police car were shot in New
York, but the rest is LA.
Even the entrance to the ‘NY’ police station,
where the suspects are lined up, is LA’s
downtown City Hall, 200 North
Spring Street (the ‘NYC’ subway
entrance was built for the film).
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The
Usual Suspects location: San Pedro police station: Herald Examiner Building,
South Broadway, downtown LA |
The ‘New York’ restaurant, from which Dean
Keaton (Gabriel Byrne)
is unceremoniously hauled off, is the lobby of the old
Herald Examiner Building,
1111 South Broadway, downtown Los
Angeles. In fact, much of the film was shot
in this abandoned newspaper office, including the ‘San
Pedro’ police station in which ‘Verbal’
Kint (Kevin Spacey)
weaves his dubious tale.
Designed, in 1912, by Julia Morgan, the architect of
William Randolph Hearst’s San Simeon estate the
inspiration for Citizen Kane's
‘Xanadu’, and seen in Stanley
Kubrick's Spartacus),
the building was inspired by the California Building
from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and was home
to the Herald Examiner newspaper. It has been
empty, used only as an occasional movie location, since
the paper closed, hosting productions including Strange
Days, The
Cable Guy and End of
Days.
The shipboard conflagration, which wipes out most of
the gang, is in LA’s
harbour, at San Pedro
(in the background, you can see the Southwest
Marine building familiar from The
Lost World: Jurassic Park).
The mysterious Mr Kobayashi (Pete
Postlethwaite) approaches the five on behalf of
Keyser Soze, in the pool room of the Hollywood
Athletic Club, 6525 Sunset Boulevard. Charlie
Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino both kept suites here
in the club’s heyday as a, somewhat notorious,
gentlemen’s club. It also houses the ‘London’
boxing venue where Hilary Swank triumphs in Clint
Eastwood's Oscar-laden Million
Dollar Baby.
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The Usual Suspects location: meeting Mr Kobayashi: The Hollywood Athletic Club, Hollywood Boulevard |
A spectacular location is the huge bell, alongside which
the suspects meet up with jewel fence,Redfoot. It’s
the Korean Bell of Friendship,
Angels Gate Park, 3601 South Gaffey Street
in San Pedro, presented
by Korea during the US bicentennial celebrations in
1976. You can find it on the breathtaking wild bluff
which overlooks the harbour of San
Pedro to the east and the Palos
Verdes Peninsula to the west.
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FILMING
LOCATIONS FOR THE USUAL SUSPECTS
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TRAVEL
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