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Earlier this week, Riverside Church passed around this undoubtedly urgent security bulletin:
“Just a heads up:
Incredible Productions, LLC. — are the producers of the film ‘The Hulk’—due out 2008. They will be flying a helicopter around the Riverside Church Tower (500 feet minimum distance—FAA standard) to shoot footage for the film. Please note the particulars:
1. This will take place on Monday and Tuesday—or—-Wednesday and Thursday if weather is bad on Monday and Tuesday—-during the day, early evening.
2. *_They do not need access to the building at all—for any reason_*—I am telling you in case someone calls and is concerned about a helicopter circling the tower—they are not terrorists!!!!!!
3. We have been chosen _only_ because of our height and proximity to Columbia University—which is the ‘unidentified’ university being featured in the film. We are the space that gives them a great vantage point of angle they need of Columbia.
4. When you see the movie, you’ll see our tower —-digitally enhanced, to appear to be providing military surveillance—there will also be a military aircraft hovering nearby—all computer generated.
5. We will in no way be identified as Riverside Church—nor will any footage of any other part of the premises be taken. You will not know it is Riverside—-(well, *you* will because I’m telling you the secret)”
Well that’s a relief. I mean God forbid anybody recognize one of the true architectural highlights of the Upper West Side…anyway, while Bwog is relieved to know that the helicopter circling UTS this week won’t be under the command of terrorists, we’re a bit off put by this “unidentified university” bullshit. Really, Hollywood–can we get a little respect? Please?
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@Alum Columbia forbids producers to use its name when doing so might make the school look bad. That’s why it was not identified in Ghostbusters, where the unnamed university treated parapsychology as a semi-legitimate discipline. The new Hulk movie (which follows soon after the 2003 Ang Lee version which Prof. James Schamus co-wrote and co-produced) might do something similar.
I share #4’s surprise that Columbia let Spiderman use its name, since the accident that turned Peter Parker into Spiderman was the result of negligence in a Columbia lab. Curiously, the university’s name is not used in Spiderman 2 even though the plot does not reflect negatively on CU at all — except that, maybe, Parker’s physics professor is going to become the Lizard in a future sequel.
@As I recall wasn’t there this problem with Ghostbusters too?
@yes though ironically when a film doesn’t use the campus, it can use the columbia name wantonly. see: old school, igby does down, etc.
@THE HULK AWESOME.
@sam You’re right, it’s the school’s fault. They have a stick up their asses about anyone using the columbia name. I’m surprised they let Spiderman use it in the first film.
@ha ha ha i like this. putting the core to use.
@wtf didn’t they just make a hulk movie two years ago or something?
and doesn’t columbia bar films from using its name due to some kind of copyright control issue? it’s a bit overwrought, I agree. they should allow it, but only in conjunctions with one of a limited set of epithets, e.g. “prestige-defining columbia university,” “swift-brained columbia university,” “harvard-eclipsing columbia university”…