Laurence Phelan - Film and TV Locations: Scout Out the World’s Top Spots for Famous Film and TV Scenes

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the ultimate movie book.

The movies take you places: cinema is a mode of transport. In just 90 minutes, you can be whisked all the way around the globe perhaps with a dotted red line marking your progress on a map as you go. Some films take you even farther, out of this world and to other galaxies far, far away. As Roman Polanski put it, a film hasnt done its job correctly unless you forgot you were sitting in a theatre.

Whats great is that the converse is often true: there are some places that can transport you into the world of a movie. If you want to feel like James Bond, try going to James Bond Island (page 10). In a Holly Golightly mood? Have a danish pastry and some coffee outside Tiffanys in Manhattan (page 62). Or want to feel like Rocky? Then run up the steps to the Philadelphia Museum (page 24) and put your hands in the air like a champ when you get to the top.

This book is about the real-world places that provided the backdrops and settings for some of our most memorable collective dreams. Some of these locations played themselves and others were dressed up to look like somewhere else. But they all added texture and colour and weight to the visions of our best TV- and film-makers.

Who needs CGI when the real world looks as fabulous and varied as this?

N 29 32 3.5052 E 35 24 29.1312

2015

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Despite the support and involvement of NASA, it wasnt practical for Ridley Scott to shoot pro-science Robinson Crusoe story The Martian on Mars, so he returned to the next best thing: Wadi Rum in Jordan, where hed also shot scenes set on an alien planet in Prometheus (2012).

Wadi Rum is also known as the Valley of the Moon but the Valley of Mars might be more apt. Red Planet (2000) and the Last Days on Mars (2013) were both filmed there, too. As were key scenes in Lawrence of Arabia (1962).

JOE WINDSOR-WILLIAMS/LONELY PLANET

S 13 9 47.3076 W 72 32 41.8668

2004

Machu Picchu, Peru

In 1952, during a year-long road trip through South America on a Norton motorcycle, the 23-year-old medical student and future revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara had a political awakening. In Walter Salless beautifully photographed movie version of events, young Che is profoundly moved by the 15th-century Incan mountaintop city of Machu Picchu, and wonders aloud about the progressive utopia South America might have become if not for the Spanish conquistadors. Human sacrifices notwithstanding.

MARTIN BISOF/500PX

N 32 46 34.5144 W 96 47 48.8832

1988

Dallas City Hall, Texas, USA

The great cyberpunk sci-fi cinema of the 1980s envisaged dehumanised, depersonalised worlds. For example, RoboCop took IM Peis design for Dallas City Hall, a bold modernist inverted pyramid he intended to convey an image of the people, and turned it into the headquarters of OCP, the ruthless and unfeeling private corporation that supplies law enforcement in a dystopian future. Still, cool robots!

JDONOVAN REESE/GETTY IMAGES

N 41 53 17.106 E 12 28 53.8932

1953

Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome, Italy

Legend has it that the Bocca della Verit an ancient Roman marble manhole cover which is now in the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin acts like a kind of primitive lie detector. Its probably nonsense. But it is true that you can pinpoint the exact moment that the world fell in love with Audrey Hepburn to the supposedly unscripted bit in Roman Holiday when she reacts to Gregory Peck sticking his hand in its mouth.

JAMES HARDY/GETTY IMAGES

N 48 48 17.514 E 2 7 13.278

2006

Palace of Versailles, France

Perhaps because she intended a more sympathetic portrait of the cake-eating queen than most, or perhaps simply because she films beautiful things so beautifully, Sofia Coppola was given the keys to the castle: that is, unprecedented access to any of the Palace of Versailless 700 rooms that she wished to film in.

FREDERIC LEGRAND - COMEO/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM

N 8 16 28.2828 E 98 30 4.4136

1974

James Bond Island (Khao Phing Kan), Thailand

Khao Phing Kan rarely goes by its given name, and has been locally known as James Bond Island ever since Christopher Lees supervillain Scaramanga hid his solex agitator in the limestone karst tower off its shore. Why Scaramanga also built a funhouse and hall of mirrors on the island is anyones guess, but its best not to question the logic of the Roger Mooreera Bond films too closely.