OK, a wrong guess. I do know about 12 Monkeys shooting there - a location seen a number of times was a weird block-long building, now gone, on the west side of Broad Street about halfway between City Hall and the main Temple University campus. When I lived there, I did get to see a scene from Brian DePalma's Blow Out being shot - John Lithgow's assassin character in a Center City phone booth, probably around 16th and Spruce.
How did V***GER know how to say "V'ger"?
- Thread starter gottacook
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OK, a wrong guess. I do know about 12 Monkeys shooting there - a location seen a number of times was a weird block-long building, now gone, on the west side of Broad Street about halfway between City Hall and the main Temple University campus. When I lived there, I did get to see a scene from Brian DePalma's Blow Out being shot - John Lithgow's assassin character in a Center City phone booth, probably around 16th and Spruce.
Philadelphia cuts off its nose to spite its face. We want businesses here, yet we tax the living shit out of them and subject them to unions. This city lost a deal to have a movie studio built here in what used to be the Navy Yard, I believe. But because this city will not give up its demands on anyone trying to do business here, they ended up negotiating with a suburb, but I didn't follow up on that. Philadelphia's not over-used in movies and television, so it has some cool locations to offer, but ... when something like 12 Monkeys does get made here, it's a wonder how that even happened. Really ...!!!
Thanks.
The club that I ran for over a decade actually started in the early 70s in Sydney. A female fan, who would eventually become manager of Sydney's dedicated science fiction bookshop, Galaxy, had a letter printed about "Star Trek" in a local TV magazine, and that united her with two schoolgirls who'd just formed their own club.
I found Trek independently, though, via random episodes of TAS (first in b&w) and TOS (a few eps were presented "for the first time in colour") when Australia got colour TV in 1975. Then came a week of newspaper articles in December 1979 "from the set of ST:TMP" when TMP was about to premiere here in Sydney, and there was TV news coverage of the arrival in Sydney of De Kelley and Persis Khambatta to promote the movie. I also picked up the novelization from a rack near the check-out at my local supermarket; the Australian edition had several colour pages inside, with captioned stills of the characters. And I discovered "Starlog" magazine, and eventually secured the 29 previous issues I'd never noticed on newsstands.
So I actually missed the big gala premiere of TMP, but was quickly intrigued by fandom. It was a huge costumed affair. An old school friend had just been to the premiere, so the movie was the talk of my 21st birthday party a few days later. Having just finished three stimulating years at teachers' college, but with no immediate prospect of a teaching job, Trek fandom filled a newly-opened void! Very soon I was elected as the club's Vice President and, when our then-president stepped down in December 1983, the job fell to me for the next decade. It's all a matter of timing.
Australia had similarly-sized Trek clubs (ours growing from 200 people to 1000 in a decade) in each capital city, so interstate conventioneering was also possible for those who scrimped and saved and were prepared to travel long distances to meet fellow fans. Australia's SF media groups tended to exist beside the "serious SF" literature groups, and there was plenty of cross-pollination.
Astrex Star Trek Fan Club of NSW by Therin of Andor, on Flickr
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That's an excellent post, Therin. I hope you've saved it - for use later on, elsewhere, perhaps. It's something how life can kind of lead you in unexpected directions. One day you're watching TAS in black and white, not even really sure what you're looking at. The next, you're cock of the walk in Fandom circles! A most interesting read, sir ...
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