The Mean Season (1985) Film & Locations

[Paul Veres]

Another thread for a Miami-set movie, this time instead of "filming locations" I decided to call it "film & locations" so it's clear the discussion of the film itself is also welcome. @airtommy , @miamijimf you showed interest in this movie before and my understanding is CGlide's site doesn't have it. 

I generally liked the movie, but I'll like anything filmed in Miami and I'll like anything with Kurt Russell, so this was easy. It is a really great movie locations-wise. Some Miami movies are either full of just "mainstream" locations everybody knows, and sometimes don't show the city at all. But this one, just like for example The Specialist, has some great locations which fall into the goldilocks zone of looking findable and interesting at the same time.

I think Miami movies deserve their own threads and not just quick comments in this thread, so we can thoroughly get on locations if we wanted. Don't mean to be making these threads CGlidesque by trying to go each location from the start of the movie. Rather, a leisurely stroll here and there when the mood strikes.

@miamijimf in your comment elsewhere from 2015 you mentioned a Coral Gables house, I assume this one.

I just found it. To me the most useful shot was this:

I have some intuition for Coral Gables and this street immediately gave me the vibes of the central areas between the Granada and Country Club sections. I also through of the University Drive and even more so of Old Cutler Road, but ruled those out quickly and focused on Almeria Ave and Columbus Blvd. Of course the playground in the back of this shot was really helpful too:

It's 2416 Columbus Blvd, further confirmed by the numbers around the door.

Here is a note about this home (shot from another angle): https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/165833

[Paul Veres]

Anybody wants to take this one?

[Tom]

vor 7 Stunden schrieb Paul Veres:

Anybody wants to take this one?

701 Brickell Ave (built in 1986). Easy to triangulate: the multilevel building on the right behind the guy at the window is Brickell One built in 1982 on Brickell Key and was the only building on Brickell Key in 1985 when the movie was supposedly filmed- it was rather filmed in 1986 due to built date of the building they are in. Also the land on the lower left outside the big window is the (north tip) of Brickell Key with the mouth of Miami River seen as a small tip above. In the background is clearly the Port of Miami.

P.S: the building south of 701 Brickell is the only other that could potentially match with the angle and the distance we see, but 777 Brickell was built in 2008 and can be ruled out. See my pics below.

 

 

[Paul Veres]

7 hours ago, Tom said:

701 Brickell Ave (built in 1986). Easy to triangulate: the multilevel building on the right behind the guy at the window is Brickell One built in 1982 on Brickell Key and was the only building on Brickell Key in 1985 when the movie was supposedly filmed- it was rather filmed in 1986 due to built date of the building they are in. Also the land on the lower left outside the big window is the (north tip) of Brickell Key with the mouth of Miami River seen as a small tip above. In the background is clearly the Port of Miami.

P.S: the building south of 701 Brickell is the only other that could potentially match with the angle and the distance we see, but 777 Brickell was built in 2008 and can be ruled out. See my pics below.

 

 

Yeah, gotta be. There is also a nice shot showing this building behind Andy Garcia.

Which is later shown to be behind the Presbyterian church.

So there is nothing between them and that building and they have to be in 701 Brickell. 

Do you know what that building was in Downtown you circled red? Since those CoStar bastards took down Emporis.com after acquisition we lost a convenient source of looking up the dates of constructions and demolitions!

[airtommy]

I studied this movie a few years ago.  My notes:

• victim's family - 2416 Columbus Blvd Coral Gables
• Malcolm's house - 651 NE 69th St
• villain - 109 SW S River Dr at 1st St Bridge
• Gerstein Justice Building 1351 NW 12th St (south side)
• school - Coral Gables Prep Academy 105 Minorca Ave
• Joe's Stone Crab
• Miami Herald Building
• payphones - Shorecrest, Orange Bowl, Coopertown Airboat 22700 SW 5th St

I pegged the psychologist's office as 777 Brickell.  I don't remember why and I might have been wrong.  I do know this building was built in 1980 and is seen in the MV opening montage.

Edited April 16 by airtommy

[Paul Veres]

22 hours ago, airtommy said:

I studied this movie a few years ago.  My notes:

• victim's family - 2416 Columbus Blvd Coral Gables
• Malcolm's house - 651 NE 69th St
• villain - 109 SW S River Dr at 1st St Bridge
• Gerstein Justice Building 1351 NW 12th St (south side)
• school - Coral Gables Prep Academy 105 Minorca Ave
• Joe's Stone Crab
• Miami Herald Building
• payphones - Shorecrest, Orange Bowl, Coopertown Airboat 22700 SW 5th St

I pegged the psychologist's office as 777 Brickell.  I don't remember why and I might have been wrong.  I do know this building was built in 1980 and is seen in the MV opening montage.

Nice! Jim also sent me his earlier research. Combining both lists, in order of appearance (I omit cities because the address are unique within the county anyway):

• Miami Journal production room and offices - Miami Herald Building, 1 Herald Plaza
• Victim 1 family house - 2416 Columbus Blvd
• Malcolm's girlfriend workplace - Coral Gables Prep Academy, 105 Minorca Ave
• Malcolm's house - 651 NE 69th St (@airtommy sorry but I have doubts about this one)
• Justice Building - Gerstein Justice Building, 1351 NW 12th St (south side)
• Psychologist's office - 701 OR 777 Brickell
• Miami Journal parking lot - 1st Presbyterian Church, 609 Brickell Ave (press swarms Malcolm)
• Villain's house - S River Dr and 1st St (next to the draw bridge)
• Bar where journalists hang out - Tobacco Road, 626 South Miami Ave
• Victims 2-3's house - unidentified, will be pretty tough
• Payphone - Shorecrest Hotel, 1545 Collins Ave
• Dinner - Joe's Stone Crab, 11 Washington Ave
• Payphone - Orange Bowl Stadium, 1501 NW 3rd St
• Victim 4 - some woods, impossible to unidentify
• Police department - Miami Police Department HQ, 400 NW 2nd Ave
• Trailer park - 2750 NW S River Dr (Paradise Trailer Park)
• Meeting with police - same police department?
• Malcolm jumps a draw bridge - unidentified, should be easy
• Malcolm runs cross traffic - unidentified, should be possible
• Payphone - Coopertown Airboat, 22700 US Hwy 41
• Victim 5 - somewhere in the Everglades, impossible to unidentify

[Paul Veres]

23 hours ago, airtommy said:

I studied this movie a few years ago.  My notes:

• victim's family - 2416 Columbus Blvd Coral Gables
• Malcolm's house - 651 NE 69th St
• villain - 109 SW S River Dr at 1st St Bridge
• Gerstein Justice Building 1351 NW 12th St (south side)
• school - Coral Gables Prep Academy 105 Minorca Ave
• Joe's Stone Crab
• Miami Herald Building
• payphones - Shorecrest, Orange Bowl, Coopertown Airboat 22700 SW 5th St

I pegged the psychologist's office as 777 Brickell.  I don't remember why and I might have been wrong.  I do know this building was built in 1980 and is seen in the MV opening montage.

I was considering 777 also, because the angle matches better how we see Brickell Key One - with decent view of all the staggered floors on the right:

From 701 we might not get that angle:

Now that it's back on the menu with a revised construction date, it could be it. 701 would be blocking the view of the building behind the church but if 701 was finished a year after the movie was filmed, it still works for 777.

[airtommy]

1 hour ago, Paul Veres said:

Malcolm's house - 651 NE 69th St (sorry but I have doubts about this one)

I don't even remember who Malcolm is. 

Do you know what times in the movie we see this house?

[Tom]

vor 9 Stunden schrieb Paul Veres:

I was considering 777 also, because the angle matches better how we see Brickell Key One - with decent view of all the staggered floors on the right:

From 701 we might not get that angle:

Now that it's back on the menu with a revised construction date, it could be it. 701 would be blocking the view of the building behind the church but if 701 was finished a year after the movie was filmed, it still works for 777.

The 777 we see now was built in 2008 according to realtor data.  But this has to be a wrong date. Because on the 1986 aerial the 777 building looks the same with the same roof shape and vent pattern on top. In the movie the Brickell One building in the background is approximately on the same level like the scene, the 777 buildings looks so small that they would have to film on the penthouse level to achieve around the higher level of the Brickell One Building we see in the movie.

 

[Paul Veres]

10 hours ago, airtommy said:

I don't even remember who Malcolm is. 

Do you know what times in the movie we see this house?

Malcolm is the protagonist, Kurt Russell's character.

The house shows up many times, basically every day when he comes home from work. Most of the time though they only show the interior, which is not helpful. There is a couple of good exterior shots though.

15:52 where we get a quick full exterior view:

We see a house recessed into the lot, though it's not too clear what the swale/sidewalk/curb situation is. It has a car port on the left, and a banyan tree a little further left in front of the car port.

53:24 starting a scene with a few nice shots around the car port.

The car port roof is resting on double wooden stilts.

Clear view of the house across the road and its particular entrance design. The banyan tree is behind the Beetle. 

Now let's go to the house we think is the house, 651 NE 69th St.

It's a similar configuation in that it has a car port, and the vegetation/swale situation can be explained by street redevelopment, but it just looks like a different house - most notably it has two floors, while Malcolm's house has one. And this house wasn't modified since 1924 when it was built. Homes across the road also don't look like the home across the road in the movie.

So I don't think it's the house, and if you could remember your logic, maybe we can pick up somewhere along the way of your past search. Otherwise, and generally, this looks like very hard to impossible to find, though the Upper East Side vibe matches. 

Edited April 17 by Paul Veres

[Paul Veres]

2 hours ago, Tom said:

The 777 we see now was built in 2008 according to realtor data.  But this has to be a wrong date. Because on the 1986 aerial the 777 building looks the same with the same roof shape and vent pattern on top. In the movie the Brickell One building in the background is approximately on the same level like the scene, the 777 buildings looks so small that they would have to film on the penthouse level to achieve around the higher level of the Brickell One Building we see in the movie.

 

I just do a simple google search like the address and "year built" and get this from PropertyShark which appears to generally be a nice website with interesting details on buildings.

Agreed, it would have to be the top floor. 

 

[Paul Veres]

A unique thing about this movie was that it filmed in Miami Herald building, now of course inaccessible as it was demolished in 2014, by just plugging into the reporters' regular work and not changing anything about it. There was a great article in NY Times at the time - you can read it here.

Quote

One of the most significant choices made by the producers was to use the Herald newsroom rather than attempt to duplicate it. ''I don't think we could have had the aroma, the feel we had at the Herald,'' said Mr. Foster. ''It had a tone, that city room. I had no idea news reporters were that sloppy.''

The clutter on the desks - dirty utensils, tottering stacks of books, tangled computer printouts - was not tampered with. Extras were chosen, and outfitted, to match snapshots previously taken of Herald employees. Malcolm Anderson, more often than not, wears a summer-weight suit, while Andy Porter, the photographer, chooses Hawaiian print shirts and rumpled jeans. Reporters use the plastic ballpoint pens that are standard issue in newsroom supply cabinets and bulky, outdated tape recorders crusted with grime.

It's incredible that not only Russell shadowed a Miami Herald reporter and photographer in their job to get ready for the role, but that he also got an unfortunate chance to witness a murder scene, not dissimilar from victim 4 in the movie:

Quote

...a wailing baby carried from the house where he had lain in his parents' blood - was more than Mr. Russsell had bargained for...

The article explores, as does the movie, the moral side of crime reporters...

Quote

...the reporter and photographer cajole their way into the Coral Gables home of the first victim, a teen-aged girl, and pore over a family album with her mother while she awaits indentification of the body.

When the dreaded call comes, Malcolm Anderson studies the mother on the telephone. He is open-mouthed and nearly as stricken as the weeping woman - a world apart from Andy Porter clicking his shutter. Mumbling an uncomfortable goodbye, the pair then rise to leave, and, almost as an afterthought, Malcolm reaches for a snapshot of the daughter, then quickly drops it with a gesture of self-disgust. Andy grabs the picture and the scene fades.

...and on top of that, Miami Herald reporters of the 80s, smack in the middle of Miami Vice place and time. Due to that fact we can get great shots like this one from the extinct Miami Herald building, overlooking 1985 MacArthur causeway and Watson island.

Edited April 17 by Paul Veres

[Paul Veres]

Another unidentified location is the first fake Miami Journal parking lot. The other fake parking lot was figured out before by @miamijimf, which was straightforward with the church view in the background. Here the main shot is this:

Then he pulls into some surace lot on the right. On the left of the above frame, we can make out a Four Ambassadors sign:

If there's indeed the Four Ambassadors on the left, my best guess is that this is Brickell Bay Drive looking south, where we can match some structures with the shot above. 

However, did they really build fake security gates for this one shot? Maybe they were there before for something else. Is that road way in the back was that bad? It almost looks like a dirt road. Maybe just a lot of dirt coming off trucks leaving construction sites. Finally, I'm not sure there was a surface lot at the time to pull into later in the scene.

 

[airtommy]

You solved this one.  It's the parking lot behind (east of) 777 Brickell and the camera is looking southward at Brickell Bay Drive.  The security gates are real and they're for 777 Brickell.

This movie was released in February 1985, which means it was filmed in 1984.  In the 1984 aerial, they hadn't even broken ground yet on 701 Brickell.

[Paul Veres]

6 minutes ago, airtommy said:

You solved this one.  It's the parking lot behind (east of) 777 Brickell and the camera is looking southward at Brickell Bay Drive.  The security gates are real and they're for 777 Brickell.

This movie was released in February 1985, which means it was filmed in 1984.  In the 1984 aerial, they hadn't even broken ground yet on 701 Brickell.

Wait, are you saying that this road:

is SE 8th St? 

[airtommy]

11 minutes ago, Paul Veres said:

Wait, are you saying that this road is SE 8th St? 

Yup!   

[Paul Veres]

Let's crack another one - victim 1 site. The murder scene itself shows nothing notable, but the investigation scene (right before the Coral Gables house scene) has some clues. This is the main shot of the beach we get.

The beach could be Virginia Key or Crandon, and I feel like it could be some weird little pocket beach somewhere in between or around there. Of interest is some wooden walkway leading to the site from a side.

Note the guy wearing the red tie in both shots, and how everybody on that platform is looking left (first shot) and right (second), while Malcolm (white shirt with his back to us) is running left towards the platform to exit the scene. I'm not even convinced that that platform has an "official" ramp down to the right. This implies that the site is somewhat secluded (or was at the time), with only that wooden walkway providing an easy path to it.

[Paul Veres]

21 hours ago, airtommy said:

I don't even remember who Malcolm is. 

Do you know what times in the movie we see this house?

OK, it's just some notes mix-up. I was just looking at victims 2-3 house and it looked very familiar and I realized it's the house you had down as Malcolm's 651 NE 69th St!

Now how you cracked it I don't know. The biggest clue is the open space at the end of the street, with some large building behind it.

So if you could recognize that building, you're done. It should be Palm Bay Yacht Club condos, built in 1982. 

It's of different color today, but that central column with horizontal ridges is unmistakable. 

[airtommy]

1 hour ago, Paul Veres said:

OK, it's just some notes mix-up. I was just looking at victims 2-3 house and it looked very familiar and I realized it's the house you had down as Malcolm's 651 NE 69th St!

 

Now how you cracked it I don't know. The biggest clue is the open space at the end of the street, with some large building behind it.

The biggest clue was the house number (as seen in your screencap).  

[Tom]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb Paul Veres:

Let's crack another one - victim 1 site. The murder scene itself shows nothing notable, but the investigation scene (right before the Coral Gables house scene) has some clues. This is the main shot of the beach we get.

The beach could be Virginia Key or Crandon, and I feel like it could be some weird little pocket beach somewhere in between or around there. Of interest is some wooden walkway leading to the site from a side.

Note the guy wearing the red tie in both shots, and how everybody on that platform is looking left (first shot) and right (second), while Malcolm (white shirt with his back to us) is running left towards the platform to exit the scene. I'm not even convinced that that platform has an "official" ramp down to the right. This implies that the site is somewhat secluded (or was at the time), with only that wooden walkway providing an easy path to it.

If we refine a search pattern from these stills, then it should look like this:

• open sea only, nothing blocks view
• very "narrow" beach, hardly any beach between vegetation and the waterline
• water looks quite dark/not very shallow or at least not a lot of sandy bottom of the sea visible, as usually with flat sandy beaches
• dense vegetation behind the cops
• wooden poles, marking shallow water and that boats are likely to approach
• the wooden pathway stops very close to the water

Adding this all up, only very few short stretches of beach are left on Virginia Key or Key Biscayne (see my red marks in pics attached). Any potential main land spots like the Matheson Hammock Park marina surrounding disqualify due to blocked view or wrong beach pattern.

I hoped I can see the wooden walkway on the 1986 historic aerial, but I did not.  

My best guess is a spot near the waterplant and former Jimbo´s on the eastern north tip of Virginia Key (third pic), as it qualifies for all above AND has one big outstanding feature compared to other potential stretches: there is a small access road very near (even a white car can be seen on it on the 86 aerial), thus makes the existence of a wooden walkway more plausible (who would build it or select it as a filming location in the middle of nowhere with no car accessibility nearby?), although not clearly visible there.

 

 

Edited April 18 by Tom

[Tom]

vor 19 Stunden schrieb Paul Veres:

Malcolm is the protagonist, Kurt Russell's character.

The house shows up many times, basically every day when he comes home from work. Most of the time though they only show the interior, which is not helpful. There is a couple of good exterior shots though.

15:52 where we get a quick full exterior view:

We see a house recessed into the lot, though it's not too clear what the swale/sidewalk/curb situation is. It has a car port on the left, and a banyan tree a little further left in front of the car port.

53:24 starting a scene with a few nice shots around the car port.

The car port roof is resting on double wooden stilts.

Clear view of the house across the road and its particular entrance design. The banyan tree is behind the Beetle. 

Now let's go to the house we think is the house, 651 NE 69th St.

It's a similar configuation in that it has a car port, and the vegetation/swale situation can be explained by street redevelopment, but it just looks like a different house - most notably it has two floors, while Malcolm's house has one. And this house wasn't modified since 1924 when it was built. Homes across the road also don't look like the home across the road in the movie.

So I don't think it's the house, and if you could remember your logic, maybe we can pick up somewhere along the way of your past search. Otherwise, and generally, this looks like very hard to impossible to find, though the Upper East Side vibe matches. 

Malcom´s house is findable. I don´t have the movie, only had a short snippet from YT to work with.

But: when trying to determine the orientation of the house, the exterior scenes when he attacks the delivery guy indicate that the house is facing EAST, because the sun seems to come from the south of the house (see pics below shadow of baseball bat from sun coming from the left when Malcolm attacks the guy on the SE side of the entrance. Thus, we are looking for longish 1-story modest wooden house facing east on a very bushy N-S running  small street with heavy vegetation and big Banyans. They filmed at Columbus Bvd in Gables which is exactly such a street (but no quick find there, houses too big/expensive/wrong shape.

The unpaved street (at least no asphalt or concrete) and the vegetation incl. Banyan says clearly Coconut Grove or parts of Coral Gables.

The house vis a vis is also a very good clue and has a signifcant front.

 

Edited April 18 by Tom

[Tom]

Crime scene 1: in the movie they say Bill Baggs Beach and I think it is. On the aerials we see several wooden bridges (or looks like) reaching out to the sea in the southern east part near the Lighthouse.

See below.

 

 

[Paul Veres]

1 hour ago, Tom said:

Crime scene 1: in the movie they say Bill Baggs Beach and I think it is. On the aerials we see several wooden bridges (or looks like) reaching out to the sea in the southern east part near the Lighthouse.

See below.

 

 

Nice! That makes perfect sense in terms of the vegetation mix we see in the scene. It's funny they actually called it out in the movie... I had our baby crying through the first 10 minutes of the movie or so and couldn't hear a thing 

[Tom]

And crime scene 4 (rainy scene) is Matheson Hammock. It looks like it. Also mentioned in the scene before by the killer. 

 

 

[Paul Veres]

List refresh!

• Victim 1 murder - Bill Baggs beach
• Miami Journal parking lot - Brickell Bay Dr & Brickell Key Dr
• Miami Journal production room and offices - Miami Herald Building, 1 Herald Plaza
• Victim 1 family house - 2416 Columbus Blvd
• Malcolm's girlfriend workplace - Coral Gables Prep Academy, 105 Minorca Ave (also call #6)
• Malcolm's house - unidentified
• Villain's house - S River Dr and SW 1st St, next to the draw bridge (call #1, from his home)
• Justice Building - Gerstein Justice Building, 1351 NW 12th St (south side)
• Payphone - unidentified and most certainly unidentifiable (call #2), very frequent car passing in front of him, some lawn/hedge visible in between
• Psychologist's office - 777 Brickell
• Miami Journal parking lot - 1st Presbyterian Church, 609 Brickell Ave
• Bar where journalists hang out - Tobacco Road, 626 South Miami Ave
• Payphone - unidentified and most certainly unidentifiable (call #3), vast open space in front, possibly Freedom Tower and Miami Herald building seen in distance
• Victims 2-3's house - 651 NE 69th St
• Payphone - Shorecrest Hotel, 1545 Collins Ave (call #4)
• Dinner - Joe's Stone Crab, 11 Washington Ave
• Payphone - Orange Bowl Stadium, 1501 NW 3rd St (call #5)
• Victim 4 - Matheson Hammock
• Police department - Miami Police Department HQ, 400 NW 2nd Ave
• Trailer park - 2750 NW S River Dr (Paradise Trailer Park)
• Malcolm driving sequence - SW 2nd St & SW North River Dr (identified down in a later post)
• Malcolm jumps a draw bridge - SW 1st St draw bridge
• Malcolm runs across traffic - Brickell Ave & SE 15th St (identified down in a later post)
• Malcolm runs by parked cars - must be the same location, going west on SE 15th St, by the stone hedge
• Payphone - Coopertown Airboat, 22700 US Hwy 41 (call #7)
• Victim 5 - unidentified and most certainly unidentifiable

 

Edited April 18 by Paul Veres