Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2022 March 2

= March 2 =

Mystery man in Maravich documentary
Who is this on the Pete Maravich documentary? . Thanks in advance! 2600:1702:690:F7A0:E5F0:7410:5C7C:7765 (talk) 06:24, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Calvin Murphy. He's introduced at 4:03 in the same video.  -- Jayron 32 17:20, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Many thanks! 2600:1702:690:F7A0:E8C4:93D8:8565:9D61 (talk) 03:47, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

The Towering Inferno
Was the skyscraper in The Towering Inferno based on the Sears Tower? It sure did look similar to me (and my mom, who is a big connoisseur of architecture, when I asked her to compare it to pictures of the various famous American high-rises, also pointed to the picture of the Sears Tower and said "that's the one")! 2601:646:8A81:6070:4C63:46D3:1EF4:840E (talk) 08:16, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Not really. According to IMDB (user-generated content, so not a reliable source), the building used for the exterior shots was the Bank of America building at 555 California Street, San Francisco. --Viennese Waltz 08:23, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Our (inevitable) article 555 California Street agrees. On the other hand, this may only have been for shots of the plaza and lobby. Card Zero  (talk) 08:43, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * But according to Wikipedia (also not a reliable source), both buildings' design involved the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. --184.144.97.125 (talk) 22:03, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * They make many tall buildings, they were a big part of the Burj Khalifa design and that looks nothing like the Sears Tower. The article says they design buttloads of disparate things, they don't do only one style or type of structure. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:25, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * oh cool, i've worked there —Tamfang (talk) 05:03, 3 March 2022 (UTC)


 * The Towering Inferno building may have been inspired by real architecture but there will be some non-zero amount of cheating as it's supposed to be about 200 feet taller than the tallest building of the time. I don't know anything about this movie but they obviously have ways to show a real building and make it look taller. For example a newer film I like showed most of an existing futuristic-looking building that was much shorter than the one in the future it plays and they faked the background after filming to make the roof helicopter escape look much higher. Actually Ghostbusters did this too, the Ghostbusters building is real but shorter than in the film (and further downtown, the Central Park West address given is too north to even exist much less be tall) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 22:22, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * The building used or simulated in the movie doesn't look all that much like the Willis Tower, which is kind of boxy. --←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:27, 2 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay my memory of seeing it's image in 2006 was right: looks cool but little resemblance (link to film scale model), it's modernist architecture like the Sears not post-mod, that's about it. Towers that are pre-1980s all-glass boxes are all modernist. But probably inspired by the recent breaking of the over four decade old world height record in 1972 and 74 (Twin Tower 1 and the Sears Tower, which reached final height on May 3, 1973, the first rights to the story were bought in April 1973 from an author who published later in '73 and burned a fictional plaza building a few blocks north of the Twin Towers but 159 foot taller so obviously inspired by them). Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 00:49, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Keep in mind that the movie was set in San Francisco, (not Chicago). At the time that the movie was being made, two modernist skyscrapers had transformed the San Francisco skyline in the previous five years, 555 California Street, which was the headquarters of Bank of America at that time, and the still unique Transamerica Pyramid. I think that the fictional skyscraper incorporated elements of both of these dramatic buildings, on steroids of course, because we are talking about the Hollywood blockbuster genre. Cullen328 (talk) 05:30, 3 March 2022 (UTC)