Airport Stand-Ins
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There are some airports that are resolutely somewhere (think Vegas’ slot-machine lined McCarran Airport) and others that are downright destinations in and of themselves (Munich, Schiphol, San Francisco), but there’s always some aspect of an airport’s architecture that epitomizes anonymity, looking and feeling simultaneously like everywhere and nowhere. This may be why, when Hollywood comes a-knocking, any airport may be fit to audition for the role of “the airport.”
Ontario International Airport has had a stellar career thus far, playing the backdrop for Frank’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) piloting antics as Miami International Airport (MIA) in Catch Me if You Can, as MIA again in Blow. ONT hit the jackpot with the role of Vegas’s McCarron Airport in Sandra Bullock-starring Miss Congeniality 2, and landed the role-of-a-lifetime as Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport in the final scenes of Argo. If there was an Oscar to win for “best airport of different airport,” ONT would have had it in the bag.
Having not succeeded in the airport industry, Montréal-Mirabel International Airport (YMX), closed for several years and slated for demolition, did what any neglected, mid-life crisis enduring airport would do: tried it’s hand at a career in the movies. Most famous for it’s role as John F. Kennedy International Airport’s (JFK) exterior in The Terminal, it’s been mostly downhill for YMX since then, with a bit role as an “unnamed airport” in the zombie-flick Warm Bodies – a somewhat fitting final role.
You wouldn’t think that this ordinary, county-owned airport located three miles north of White Plains, New York, would be the place that Shaft would choose to return to, but indeed, it was in the Samuel L. Jackson-starring, 2001 flick Shaft Returns. The airport also plays as the place where Ben Stiller’s Gaylord Focker loses it (LaGuardia) in Meet the Parents and as New York City’s other airport, JFK, in The Thomas Crown Affair. It’s a New Yorker thing, apparently.
The rumored “diva” of the industry, Chicago O’Hare International Airport remains hell-bent on playing itself in Risky Business, My Best Friend’s Wedding, and Home Alone, despite widespread criticisms that ORD will risk bring typecast until proves it can diversify.
Know of any other airport stand-ins to add to the list? Tweet us @theAPEXassoc! Read the full story in The Architecture Issue, here.