Dominique Barrett
California is well known for being the location of many popular movies, but one would be surprised how many great movies were filmed as close as San Diego.
Your favorite celebrity might be a lot closer than you think. Plenty of famous movies like Some Like It Hot to more current movies like Paranormal Activity were filmed in San Diego.
Some Like It Hot was released in 1959. The film starred Marilyn Monroe (Sugar Kane), Jack Lemmon (Daphne), and Tony Curtis (Josphine). Directed by Billy Wilder, it was a movie about two musicians on the run from the mob of the Valentine’s Day Massacre. Two men, Jerry and Joe cross-dress and join an all-female band.
The movie was filmed in only 7 days at Coronado Beach near downtown San Diego. The ‘Miami’ hotel is in fact the Hotel Del Coronado, 1500 Orange Avenue.
Top Gun (1986) was another movie filmed in San Diego. The film stars Tom Cruise as navy pilot Pete Mitchell who is sent to the Miramar Naval Air Station. There he tries to beat Tom Kasansky (Val Kilmer) for the “Top Gun” award.
The movie features many San Diego sites like the Naval Training Center, the Miramar Naval Air Station, Mission Beach Plunge, USS Enterprise, and the USS Ranger.
Well-known cheerleading movie, Bring It On (2000) was completely shot in San Diego. Torrance Shipman (Kirsten Dunst) is your all American high-school girl who has just been named captain of her school’s award winning cheer squad and she is determined to keep the awards coming, but this year she faces stiff competition from a hip-hop squad from Los Angeles.
The motion picture features many San Diego and even one PUSD high school; San Diego State University, Academy of Our Lady of Peace, Eastlake High School (Chula Vista), Kearny Senior High School, and Torrey Pines High School.
The famous comedy starring Will Ferrell, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) featured a San Diego site. Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) is the top-rated anchorman in San Diego during the ‘90s.
With the march of feminism, newswoman, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) enters the newsroom with ambitious dreams of being the first female new anchor. Most of the movie was filmed in Long Beach, but it does feature a few scenes in Balboa Park.
The house in Paranormal Activity (2009) was actually the director, Oren Peli’s house at 13236 Bavarian Drive, San Diego. The thriller is about a young couple that moves into a seemingly normal suburban house that is actually disturbed by some sort of evil spirit.
These are just a few of the more popular movies filmed here in San Diego. Not all the action is always in Hollywood.
