Hello everyone.
Since it appears people enjoyed my thread on Seinfeld/Benson, I figured I would give you some bonus content regarding a move from around the same time period.
In 1980, New York was still the clear cultural center of the US. Los Angeles was just Hollywood and beaches and not much else notable, Chicago was just a cold and windy place with a big lake, and Miami was just a place full of old people and hot weather.
The public had a fascination with the grittiness and vibrancy of New York City. You didn't just set a film or television series in New York City. New York City was always at least a co-star.
In the late '70s, British filmmaker Alan Parker was best known for directing Midnight Express, an Oliver Stone film which raked in $35 million over its low $2.3 million budget. Midnight Express introduced the world to the brutality of Turkish prisons, and in fact was the inspiration for the famed "Have you ever been to a Turkish prison?" joke on Airpane! two years later.
The 1980 film Fame, about an ensemble of students going through four years in the famous New York City High School for Performing Arts, a public school known simply as "PA". It was originally conceived by David De Silva, with the goal to make it similar to A Chorus Line. However, once director Alan Parker was hired, he teamed up with writer Christopher Gore to turn it into a somewhat dark tale of massive dysfunction amonst the students at the school.
Unfortuately for Parker, concerns about the script's dark tone and his previous violent film about Turkish prison made him unpopular with the New York City Board of Education. The head of the board, a stern older woman, wanted no part of Parker's celluloid antics. She told him, "Mr. Parker, I can’t risk you doing for New York High Schools the same thing you did for the reputations of Turkish prisons in your last film."
Parker attempted to counter that the film would bring tremendous publicity to PA. The woman responded, "We already have more students applying than we can admit. The last thing we need is more publicity."
The studio was tired of Parker's battles with the NYC Board of Ed, and planed to just move the whole production to Chicago. This upset Parker, who always wanted to do a film on location in New York, and had felt this was his big opportunity to do so.
Was Fame actually filmed in Chicago, with stock NYC shots simply spliced in? I'll tell you below...