Monday, April 13, 2009

The Grain Terminal is in Boston?

While watching one of my favorite movies this weekend, Scorsese's The Departed, I realized that our site is actually featured in a pivotal scene in the movie.

For those of you that have not seen the movie, you might not find this odd. But to anyone who has seen it, you know that it is set in Boston, not New York. Well, as is often the case in the movie industry, not all the scenes could actually be shot in Boston, so different areas of NYC and Brooklyn were actually used for a large portion of the locations (check out IMDB for a list of NY locations). The naive moviegoer would probably have never seen this long lost building, situated in a nearly forgotten area of Brooklyn. But to us, who have spent the last 3 weeks staring at every inch of this building, we would immediately identify it... which is what happened while I was watching it. As soon as they showed the first glance of the building (around 1:08 in the clip below) I sat straight up and nearly choked on my extra butter microwave popcorn as I yelped, "That's my building!", much to the confusion of my friends, haha.

Anyway, the pivotal scene that takes place inside the Grain Terminal Building is the scene where Costello and crew meets with the Chinese. The FBI has staged a sting operation thanks to the help of the undercover agent in Costello's crew, but the op fails because they do not have cameras in key locations. Below I have posted a video of the scene. If anyone hasn't seen this movie, you definitely should, because it's just a really excellent film. It is actually quite fitting to this project because it deals with themes of subversion and things that are not what they appear to be.

If this does not post correctly, you can also watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEERw4oOJrU

Like I said, our building is shown beginning at 1:08 in to the clip. The two mobs actually meet in the ground floor of the Grain Terminal (notice the large concrete columns with the distinct tapered capitols and the large, busted windows). Also, when they show the exterior of the building where the meeting is taking place, you can see the curves of the silos as well as the horizontal piece that extends out from the middle of the building down towards the water. It's good to see these first floor shots because they give you a sense of the human scale in relation to the columns. Enjoy!

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