Bull City's urban core to be featured in "Main Street"The Durham Convention and Visitor's Bureau yesterday released a tentative shooting schedule for the filming of "Main Street," starring Orlando Bloom, Andrew McCarthy, Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Clarkson, and Colin Firth.
The movie is currently set to film from April 6 through early May in the Bull City, including interior and exterior shooting at almost a dozen different sites in Durham, culminating with a multi-night shoot at the intersection of the Durham Freeway and Roxboro Rd.
Much of the filming will be centered around 206 N. Dillard St., just east of the downtown library and WTVD ABC 11's studios. If that address sounds familiar, it's because it's the listed address of the offices of the Durham Rape Crisis Center. Though from the work going on there Monday after 5pm, it looks like the building is finding at least a temporary new purpose as a movie set:
Crews were there working on the building Monday, cordoning off part of the porch, with a large trailer in the building's parking lot filled with what looked to be lighting and set equipment:
206 N. Dillard is currently set for the longest filming schedule of the shoot, with interior and exterior filming set to run from April 6 through April 14.
Next up: 400 N. Duke St., which turns out to be the Durham School of the Arts, for a four-day shoot, April 15-18. It just so happens those dates coincides with DSA's spring break, which is doubtlessly why they were chosen.
Later in April, the crews are set to use one of the ugliest buildings in Durham -- the old People's Security insurance building, now the drab headquarters of the Durham P.D.
Also in the shooting: two Linwood Ave. houses, located between Fayetteville Rd. and Alston Ave. just north of NCCU. Both houses (713 and 1004) are listed as being up for sale; perhaps the cache of being exterior set pieces for a Hollywood production might help their listing agent?
Not to be left out: a few downtown locations. 123 W. Main St., the tall, stately building restored by Self-Help a few years back, is among them:
So are two downtown churches, the Trinity United Methodist Church on the eponymous Church St., along with Cleveland St.'s First Baptist Church:
Another downtown location, for exterior as well as interior shooting, is the Durham County Courthouse at 200 E. Main St. Given the debates swirling in that building's County Commission chambers over the Jordan Lake boundary, opponents of any boundary change might find contemporary irony in the description of the movie's plot almost three years ago as "revolv[ing] around the efforts of a large corporation to hoodwink a small Southern town and the Southerners' unusual and successful defense."
On the culinary side of life, The Dog House hot-dog restaurant on Hillsborough Rd. will be one of the interior and exterior sets as well. So too will be the B.N. Duke Auditorium on NCCU's campus.
Star watcher alert: ‘Main Street’ filming locations released
Lisa Sorg · 30 Mar 2009, 5:17 PM · 1 Comment
A dozen locations around Durham, including the Dog House restaurant, have been staked out for the production of Main Street, a film starring Orlando Bloom, Andrew McCarthy, Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Clarkson and Colin Firth, according to the Durham News Service.
See the map of the locations, which include downtown, the NCCU area and west and east Durham, here: mainst_filming_locations_map
Shooting begins Monday, April 6, at 206 N. Dillard St., which is at the corner of Liberty and Dillard. Shooting then moves to 400 N. Duke St. April 15-18.
The tentative schedule for the rest of five-week shoot is as follows:
505 W. Chapel Hill St. and 1004 Linwood Ave., April 21
200 E. Main, April 22
215 N. Church and 414 Cleveland St., April 23-24
1801 Fayetteville Road, April 25
713 Linwood Ave, May 2
123 W. Main, May 4
3521 Hillsborough Road (the Dog House restaurant), May 5
