Always something there to remind you…

To be honest, I deliberately ignored the Friends TV phenomenon for years, judging it to be yet another Joburg northern suburbs fad. Then I discovered Jennifer Aniston…

Here I am, standing on the corner of Grove and Bedford streets in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, half expecting Rachel to breeze past. Even Monica (Courtney Cox) wouldn’t be half bad I think, as people around me raise their cameras and click away. Dorky Ross and dim Joey I could certainly do without.

 

This unremarkable building looks like hundreds of other New York apartment blocks but has become an entertainment icon because it was used as the “establishing” shot for the series, which went on to become one of the most popular in US TV history. The rest of the show was shot on a set in Burbank in California, but somehow that doesn’t make this place any less appealing.

The Friends apartment house is one of the most anticipated stops on this three-hour “TV and movie tour” of New York City – but such is the volume of small-screen and big- screen hits produced in this town that you could be overwhelmed. Choose a show – Friends, Sex and the City, Seinfeld, Law and Order, The Sopranos, Gossip Girl, Cake Boss, How I met Your Mother, Mad about You, Ugly Betty, The Apprentice, The Cosby Show – and they’ll have been set in New York, and some will even have been filmed here.

The city’s vast, majestic, Central Park has been the location for more than 200 movies and countless TV shows. Everywhere you turn there is something that will light up a film, TV or even music memory.

Some of those are sombre, like The Dakota, the brownstone building on Central Park West where, on December 8 1980, a misfit named Mark David Chapman had been hanging about all day. That evening, as John Lennon approached the front door of The Dakota, where he lived, Chapman drew a revolver and shot dead one of the most influential musicians of our times.

Even today, no matter whether it is raining, or sunny, or whether snow or sleet swirls around Manhattan, there will be small or large groups of Lennon devotees outside The Dakota, pondering…

A movie which used Washington Square Park as a backdrop was When Harry Met Sally, where the park is seen in the opening scene. Further on, in the Lower East Side at Katzi’s Deli, is where the movie’s most famous scene takes place.

Harry and Sally are talking about whether men can recognise when a woman is faking an orgasm. Sally claims men cannot tell the difference and, to prove it, she fakes one in front of the other deli customers.

A woman sitting nearby (played by the mother of director Rob Reiner) sees this and orders: “I’ll have what she’s having.” When Estelle Reiner died at age 94 in 2008, The New York Times referred to her as the woman “who delivered one of the most memorably funny lines in movie history”.

Katzi’s is as it was then, although a sign hangs above that table which says: “Where Harry met Sally… hope you have what she had.”

All of these wonderful tidbits of information are imparted by our guide Anna, who is an actress and, as most of them are in New York, “between gigs”.

The tour, run by ScreenTours.com – which says it is the biggest TV and movies tour company in the world – is great fun, made even more enthralling by the fact you can watch clips from movies and TV shows on a screen in the bus as it does its rounds.

You’ll see the apartment block where Michael Douglas lives, where Beyonce paid $20 million for the whole top floor of a block in Tribeca (the name sounds exotic, but is actually a contraction, as are other NY names, or geographic location – in this case, the TRIangle BElow CAnal Street).

You’ll find fascinating little stories – and my favourite has to be how a movie changed the name of a city landmark. When Al Pacino was filming Scent of a Woman at the Plaza Hotel on 5th Avenue, he could not get the name of the Oak Bar correct – he kept calling it The Oak Room. That’s how it went in the movie and the hotel, which knows a thing or two about celebrity (Pacino won an Oscar for his performance), simply changed the name to The Oak Room.

However, if you look closely at the windows, you can still see the original The Oak Bar etched into the glass.

New York – ya gotta luv it…

Brendan Seery travelled to New York courtesy of Qatar Airways and Flight Centre. For more information on travel to New York visit www.flightcentre.co.za

Priced from R3 990 per person sharing, enjoy a three-night stay in four-star luxury at the Grand Hyatt New York, a New York TV and Movie sites tour, travel bag and return transfers. Flights on Qatar Airways start from R9 390 on specific dates. This New York package is available until February 28 and a high-season surcharge may apply. Contact Flight Centre on 0860 400 747 and quote PRS92128 to book this package. Visit www.flightcentre.co.za for more details. - Saturday Star