What city is this based in?
what city is this movie based in?
shareI think that it is some where in California. I noticed the license plate on Victor Duncan's car and it had a blue plate with yellow letters. Just a guess though...
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MovieChat Forums > The Principal (1987) Discussion > What city is this based in?
East L.A.
shareIt was filmed in Alameda, Oakland, and Walnut Creek, CA. The high school was Northgate High School in Walnut Creek.
:)
"It was a dark and stormy night. I'd taken a creative writing course."
MST3K
im seeing the movie in tv right now ;)
but i dont think that it is this school:
http://www.bayareaproperty.info/vt/northgate_hs.htm
i would say it's placed in la.
I saw it to, just a moment ago on cable tv here in Holland =)
It realy looks like L.A
heres the site I found it at:
http://www.norcalmovies.com/ThePrincipal/
Im sure they fixed up the school at some point. My Dad went to a school exactly like it in Albany, now its a picture perfect school..
hope this helped, its a cool website.
"It was a dark and stormy night. I'd taken a creative writing course."
MST3K
yeah right. i saw the movie till the end. the only thing that really looked like la was the street in front of the school. for example, when he drove through the city, there was not only 1 palm tree or something else, that looked like la.
@tembac0j
greetings form a half dutchman living in germany ^^
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I taught at Northgate High School for one semester in 1978. There are about 3 to 5 seconds of Northgate High School near the beginning of the movie. The gang-infested, graffitied, run-down "high school" where most of the action occurs I think is the old, abandoned campus of Merritt Community College in Oakland. At least that's what it looked like to me, based on my recollections going by it while a student at Berkeley in the early 1970s.
sharethis movie was filmed in oakland california the school brandale was the abandoned campus of marritt college in north oakland most of the movie was filmed in north and west oakland california and parts of it in alameda ca and walnut creek ca which are cities in the san francisco bay area i know a lot about this film because my brother was an extra he was with the mexican gang members in the movie which were all hired directly of the streets of oakland most of them were from the 38st gang in east oakland i know about half the guys that came on this movie so i hope that answers your question
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I thought them fellas looked real...I noticed the red bandanas...does that mean norteno? any "rival" sets show up at the shoot?
shareYes, it was filmed in Oakland at an abandoned school which has, since then, been transformed into a really nice senior citizens center. I'm not sure what the school use to be called or what the senior citizen place is, but its on Martin Luther King Jr. Way near Children's Hospital. There's a scene where Jim Belushi is riding on his motorcycle visiting the kid who got beat up and you can see him going around Lake Merritt in Oakland.
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Looks like L.A but the gang graffity is weid because the X4 is used in northern california like san francisco and oakland and they use the color red but in the movie its in blue wich is a sourthent california gangs use so its weird
sharethe color of graffiti doesn't seem to matter so much up this way. i see blue norteno tags all the time.
There's nothing weird about it. The movie is filmed in Oakland, which makes the Norteno graffiti normal, especially in the '80s when there were no Surenos up here. And, there is no scene in this film that looks like L.A.. None, whatsoever. Old, beat up Victorian houses, overcast sky, you can even see the bay in the background when Belushi's zipping around on his bike.
sharehey does anyone know whe Stand And Deliver was filmed ?? that movie is tight too
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I have not seen this movie, but I looked it up because the first scenes of the main character at the 'nice school' were filmed at my school, which is Northgate High in Walnut Creek, and a teacher of mine who has worked there since it opened told me about the movie (She wasen't an extra, but apperently another teacher here was.)
shareCorrect-I went to Northgate High as well-Class of 93
shareThe setting for this film was non-descript but they must of used multiple locations to depict the same high school for the film but I know some of it was filmed at the old abandoned Tech High School on Martin Luther King/Grove Street campus in Oakland, California (there's another Oakland Technical school building with classes still in session several miles away on Broadway) It's been abandoned for decades so the campus IS as desolate & empty as it feels in the film.
A cool piece of trivia for American movie buffs, the teenaged Clint Eastwood graduated out of the old Oakland Tech. the same location as in the movie after WWII during the late 40s. It was on these streets of Oakland where Clint acquired his affinity for jazz music.
Thanks for the info, but I wanted to correct a couple of things.
The abandoned school that they used for filming was called "Old Tech", but this is a misnomer. The current Oak Tech is the older school. Oak Tech was temporarily relocated to the Grove street location while it was being retrofitted in the 70's, but the current location is the original one, and is the campus that Clint Eastwood graduated from.
The location on Grove (now MLK) that was used in filming, was originally University High School.
The exterior of the school was the old Oakland City College in North Oakland, CA. A lot of the shots were filmed on the streets of West Oakland. The bar where Latimer has his breakdown with his wife was the old Johnny B. Goode's in Alameda, CA. Fortunately, the Jack In The Box in the background is still there!
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