WarGames | 1983
- Locations |
- Washington State;
- Los Angeles, California
- DIRECTOR |
- John Badham
Schoolkid David Lightman (Matthew Broderick, still playing teens at 22) hacks into the US defence system for a quick game of Global Thermonuclear War.
Set in the Pacific Northwest, much of the filming was closer to the Hollywood studios, in Los Angeles.
Lightman’s school is El Segundo High School, 640 Main Street, El Segundo, seen also in the 2004 Lindsay Lohan remake of Freaky Friday, in Superbad, and in Fifties rock'n'roll classic Blackboard Jungle, as well as TV shows such as The OC, Ally McBeal and Joan of Arcadia.
His house is 333 Arden Boulevard, smack in the centre of LA itself, in the exclusive neighbourhood of Hancock Park.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, is real (it’s beneath the Cheyenne Mountains, near Colorado Springs, Colorado), but the HQ seen in the movie is a set built at Newhalem, on Route 20, in the North Cascade Mountains, Washington State.
The tunnel which leads to the facility, though, is the Griffith Park Tunnel, Los Angeles, seen in Back to the Future II and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
The 7-11 Store, where Lightman is picked up by the FBI, is at Big Bear, the lakeside resort north of Los Angeles.
David and Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) track down the elusive Falken (John Wood, playing a character inspired by Stephen Hawking and written, strangely, for John Lennon) to the fictitious ‘Goose Island’.
The ferry they catch is the Pierce County Ferry, in Steilacoom, a suburb of Tacoma, south of Seattle. ‘Goose Island’ itself is Anderson Island, in Puget Sound, about 20 minutes from Steilacoom by ferry.
