The ever-helpful Thomas Wheatley mentioned the 1992 sci-fi action film Freejack in the comments of one of the countless things I’ve written about Dowtown, but I didn’t notice until someone stole the clip for post fodder at Atlanta Metblogs. Fair enough! But I’m still using Thomas’ tip since I was just talking about Sharky’s Machine not so long ago.
Freejack, starring Emilio Estevez, Rene Russo, Anthony Hopkins, and Mick Jagger, is supposed to take place in the Bronx and Manhattan in 2009, but they shot this particular scene in Downtown Atlanta in the very early 1990s. The Civic Center MARTA station and the old Atlanta Constitution building have cameos.
This is basically no different than how people drive on West Peachtree now.
According to Thomas, this is the only scene filmed in Downtown Atlanta, but there are probably plenty of scenes like this:
Previously: Vintage violence
Tags: atlanta constitution building, emilio estevez, freejack, mick jagger, sharky's machine, thomas wheatley
Guilty as charged!
I actually watched this whole thing, which was a not-half-bad B-grade 80s futuristic actioner (bonus: no Stallone) with a nice role for David “Buster Poindexter” Johansen of the NY Dolls as well as Jagger posing and preening.
This is definitely the longest extended sequence of Atlanta locations, but if you’ll notice, the Galleria is where this starts (that particular location crops up a few more times) and a key bit at the end happens in the lobby of 191 Peachtree. I love that there was a car chase filmed in the “pigeon pits” next to the old railroad gulch.
And by “80s” I mean “90s” of course. If it were the 80s, 191 Peachtree wouldn’t even be built yet.
My memory is that the whole movie was filmed here. Well, most of it, anyway. I do know that Mick and Jerry and the kids were all over Buckhead for weeks, and that Emilio and Mick and a visiting Charlie Sheen were spotted at various nightspots, especially Velvet and particularly the Cheetah.
By the way, RoboCop III was shot in town at around this same time period.
Geez, how many times has something been filmed here but set in Detroit? Depressing.