Arthur | 2011
- Locations |
- New York
- DIRECTOR |
- Jason Winer
The 1981 classic is reworked as a vehicle for Russell Brand, with butler Hobson getting gender reassignment to become Helen Mirren.
Arthur Bach’s penthouse this time is supposedly atop the Pierre, 2 East 61st Street, the famed 5-star hotel on the East Side. Don’t ask to book the penthouse – the interior was created in the studio. On screen, the Pierre was previously home to William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) in Meet Joe Black, and its ballroom was the site of Al Pacino’s tango in Scent Of A Woman.
The lobby of the family company's ‘Bach Worldwide’ office, with its gigantic sunken globe, is the News Building, 220 42nd Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. You might remember this building as the home of the ‘Daily Globe’ in 1978’s Superman.
Unsuccessfully trying to prove he can hold down a job, Arthur briefly works at the New York East Side flagship store of Dylan’s Candy Bar, 1011 Third Avenue at East 60th Street.
You'll find the Bach family's lavish estate, where Arthur and Susan (Jennifer Garner) pose on horseback for the engagement photo, over on Long Island. It’s Old Westbury Gardens, 71 Old Westbury Road, the former estate of US Steel magnate John Shaffer Phipps, in Nassau County. The house has a long history on-screen. You may recognise it as the mansion occupied by the sinister Vandamm (James Mason) where Roger O Thornhill (Cary Grant) finds trouble in Alfred Hitchcock's North By Northwest. It’s also seen in Mike Nichols’ Wolf, Will Smith rom-com Hitch, Cruel Intentions and Ridley Scott’s epic American Gangster.
And, in a nod to the 1981 film, the church where Arthur opts out of the arranged marriage, is again the Episcopalian St Bartholomew's, 109 Park Avenue.