French Connection bar IRL

May 19, 2004 4:09 PM

In the first half of The French Connection, Gene Hackman's character wakes up after being face-down on a bar (the barman is starting to mop up, very early in the AM it looks like), picks up his hat and walks out of the bar. The bar is underneath what looks like the Brooklyn Bridge. Is/was this a real place? Can anyone ID the intersection? (This is right before he starts following the pink-wearing bicyclist girl & ends up handcuffed to his bed by her - the next scene has Roy Scheider visiting Hackman in his tenement apartment and unlocking the cuffs.)
posted by luriete to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

Sorry, I don't know the answer, but your question gave me an idea: someone should set up a website that looks like a huge streetmap of NYC. Visitors should be able to click on locations and enter info about scenes from movies that take place at those locations. Then, a red dot should appear at that location. Future visitors could click the dots and read about the scene and the movie.

Similar sites could be made for other major cities that appear often in movies (i.e. London & L.A.).

Maybe when I get some time I'll blow the dust off my programming skills and create this. Someone else here is welcome to scoop me.
posted by grumblebee at 4:42 PM on May 19, 2004

Grumblebee, don't you mean a map of Toronto with the places that were filmed as stand-ins for New York?

(I like the idea btw)
posted by loquax at 5:42 PM on May 19, 2004

Does this help, luriete? There are quite a few movie location web sites about and though the ones I've seen in the past are all pretty sketchy, the above looks OK.
posted by MiguelCardoso at 5:47 PM on May 19, 2004

Response by poster: Good idea! I always see restaurants I've been to on Law & Order (there are 2 or 3 Florent appearances, inside & out, on the various L&O shows; they seem to like the meatpacking district quite a bit). Also, they film in the west 70s pretty often - seen camera crews filming in front of Compass a few times, and they're often on that block in front of Zabar's or Barney Greengrass.
posted by luriete at 5:48 PM on May 19, 2004

There used to be a site that had photographs of a bunch of streetcorners in NYC linked to a map, I think they were trying to get all of them. I couldn't find the site, I think it was called the streetcorner project or something like that.

If no one finds a link to the answer, I can check the movie and go look over the weekend.
posted by milovoo at 6:45 PM on May 19, 2004

Hmm, Here's the first Brooklyn area scene right after the opening sequence in Marsailles. Gene Hackman was dressed like Santa Claus and Roy Scheider was dressed as a hotdog vendor. (scroll down)

I know I should remember this film better, but is the "Oasis Bar", the same bar?
posted by milovoo at 7:44 PM on May 19, 2004

That bar was called "Moochie's" and it's no longer there. I don't know the intersection.
posted by dobbs at 8:18 PM on May 19, 2004

If this was on the Manhattan side of the bridge, a great deal of that area was all cleaned up in the 80's. They built something new, the name of which escapes me, on the site of the Fulton Street Fish Market. It was a nice place to eat, when it first opened. Last time I visited it was nothing worth bothering with, mores the pity.
posted by Goofyy at 7:52 AM on May 20, 2004

Response by poster: Can't quite tell from the angle of the bridge, it looks more like the Manhattan side looking north than the Brooklyn side looking south, though. Could be the fish market area. I've walked through there, kind of touristy now.
posted by luriete at 10:43 AM on May 20, 2004