Theaters are open again and WNY is front and center for A Quiet Place II coming on May 28th. Talking film history and industry growth in Buffalo also as we highlight the 1983 film 'The Natural'.
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As you may well know, Buffalo has played host to movie, film, and production, but what you may not know is that with theaters finally reopening after being dark and quiet for over 14 months, a movie is coming in just 10 days that has plenty of Western New York presence. It's a sequel, and a quiet one at that. The Buffalo Brews and a Quiet Podcast 2 starts right now.
Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining me this week. It's Tuesday, it's Brews Day, and you know what that means. I am Jason Ettinger, your host.
Yes, it's me, it's me, it's JTE. But he said it was Jason Ettinger, so what does the T mean? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't say the T word.
Hey, we're opening this week by drinking an Old Forester straight bourbon, and this is in salute to my fellow Chemehue tribe members who finished the 18 miles of the Breakfast to Dinner Ultra as part of the Western New York Summer Hiking Challenge, and they went from Ellicottville down to Little Rock City and back this past weekend. So what I'm drinking here, we have this straight bourbon that's from the Old Forester Distillery in Louisville, Kentucky. It's a mash bill that consists of a 72% corn with an 18% rye and a 10% barley.
It won gold in the 2019 San Francisco Spirits Competition as well as a 2019 International Spirits Competition for 10 years or younger on a straight bourbon and won gold medal in both. The initial aroma, you pick up a hint right off the bat of that vanilla, and then you get what is to find out to be tobacco leaves, which is something that I'm not used to picking up when I'm taking in some of these bourbons, and then on the back end of that aroma, you get that just a slight touch of mint, and on that first taste, it's good and spicy, soft vanilla notes, and according to the description, there's some light orange notes in there, but like I've alluded to before, I have a certain issue with trying to pick up citrus notes when it comes to these bourbons, so it's something that I'm going to continue to work on as we go along, and the finish is nice and warm. It gives you a high hug and is somewhat dry, and this is definitely very tasty.
It just seems like every time that I get a hold of one of these bourbons to try out, it seems like the next one is better than the last one that I had, so this one goes out to my fellow tribe members. You're out there. I don't know if you listen, but if you do, thank you as well.
Bear Bait, Dirty Girl, Mud Butt, Hugo Stiglitz, Tumble Down, Cement Balls, Jiggly Sticks, and the newest member of the tribe, Dumpster Fire. We have certainly turned the corner in regards to this weather around here, and I am loving every single minute of it. It seems like last year, we were going into that first week, week and a half of June still experiencing the cool and wet weather, but now it looks like we're going to dry out for a little bit of the future coming up here.
I mean, if you look at this weather forecast starting today, which is Tuesday the 18th, you've got highs of 77, 84 on Wednesday, 81 on Thursday, 80 on Friday. I know you don't need a weather person, but here I am reading these off because I'm just so stinking excited. You know, you go into the weekend, 76 on Saturday, a small chance of rain on Sunday, and then next week you got 73, 75, 65, 66, 68, and then we're heading into that Memorial Day weekend, but guess what? I'm not going to be around here this year.
After having cancelling trips to Sanibel Key, St. Louis, Tucson, then I made the decision, you know what, I'm just going to stay in New York, and that's what I'm going to do. So for Memorial Day weekend, I'm not going to be around here. Heading to the Finger Lakes, folks, and there I plan to take in my fair share of breweries, wineries, and plenty of hiking.
Details of those adventures to come, and with all this great weather, it's definitely golf season as well. I myself got out for my first full round of golf in 20 plus years, and as much as I've been talking about golf in the last year and a half with folks, it's hard to believe that I hadn't had a chance to get out for a full round, but life gets busy, COVID gets in the way, things happen, but I was able to get out this past weekend and shoot my first full round of golf out at Terry Hills in Batavia, and did two things that I'm quite proud of as a result of everything that I've learned so far in the last year and a half, and that is that I shot the best game of my life this past weekend, and I got my first bogey. Now I know some people are like, ooh, that's an amazing feat, Jason, you got your first bogey, what about your first par or your first birdie? Those days are coming, but I was super happy that for the first time ever I shot a bogey.
It was on a par three, mind you, but I still shot the bogey, I kept the ball, and I'm quite proud of myself. So where did my education come from with my golf game? I've been able for the last year and a half to participate in the PGA HOPE program. So HOPE stands for Helping Our Veterans Everywhere, and it's the flagship military program of PGA REACH, which is a charitable foundation of the PGA of America.
Essentially, the PGA HOPE introduces golf to veterans with disabilities to enhance their physical, mental, social, and emotional well-being. The program introduces the game of golf through a developmental six- to eight-week curriculum, which is taught by PGA professionals trained in adaptive golf and military cultural competency. And all programs are funded by PGA REACH and supplemented by PGA Section Foundations, so the cost of programming is free to all the veterans that participate.
PGA HOPE has a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Veterans Affairs, which enables recreational therapies to, or therapists, I'm sorry, to refer veterans to the PGA HOPE program as a form of Through robust program strategy, the PGA HOPE program aspires to create a physically and emotionally healthier veteran community by shaping lives, changing lives, and possibly saving the lives of those through the game of golf. So from my personal perspective, I'm also a member and a team leader for Team RWB, our job being that we enrich and enhance the lives of our veterans. You say that you have a veteran that has a disability or a setback in their life, and you want to get them engaged in the community.
Social interaction is oh so important. It was incredibly important for me that helped me through my divorce time, as well as my transition through my job. And you heard me read at the beginning that this is for veterans with disabilities.
One thing that I have not disclosed before on this podcast that I'll say now is that I am a patient who has suffered from Crohn's disease since about 1995. I also have what they call an ileostomy, which essentially means that my large intestine was removed, and that happened back in 2012, about the same time that the movie with the end of the earth was supposedly taking place. It had the same effect.
It was incredibly life-changing, just like the movie. Anyway, I'm trying to be funny, but I digress. So essentially with an ostomy, it does limit some of the things that I can do physically.
It can be aggravating at times. But what I've learned through the PGA HOPE program, not only relearning the game of golf and learning it through professionals, it's given me the power to be able to socially interact with other players. You know, I'm meeting great people and great friends out there.
I credit a lot of my new golf education to PGA instructors like Brian Jacobs, Rob Kijewski, and Nick Martone, who's the ambassador for our HOPE program, who works out of the Glen Oak Golf Course. So I started the program originally over the winter of 2019 going into 2020. We were supposed to have our graduation weekend, the weekend of the shutdown when the pandemic started.
So all of that was canceled. Fast forward, we were able to do a summer program because it was moved to Glen Oak from the Paddock Golf Dome. And we were able to do the entire program outdoors, safe distancing, you know, wear masks.
And we really had a fun and engaging time and even got to take in a very fun scramble as part of the graduation and some great gifts that came out of that graduation as well. The winter program, we scaled that back and that went through the Iconic App program. I wasn't so engaged in that and not for a lack of trying.
It was just that not having a place and not having people that were holding me especially accountable, I wasn't able to stick with a program there. But now we're just about a little over a week away before the HOPE program will start back up. And this will be my, I guess would be my second full year now of instruction.
And I guess we can only go up from here after shooting your best game of golf and getting your first bogey of your quote unquote career. So thank you to everybody at the PGA HOPE program. I look forward to more years of participation and to learn much more to get my butt out there on the course and improve on the game of golf.
You may recall when the Asylum production group came to the Buffalo Niagara region to film scenes for Sharknado 2, the second one. Yes, that was the title of that movie. Or how about when Disney was in town to shoot the footage for Pirates of the Caribbean at World's End taking footage of Niagara Falls.
And who could ever forget when they shut down the 33 over the course of a few nights while Nickelodeon filmed chase scenes and explosions that took place for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out of the Shadows. But in June and July of 2019, over a course of 47 days, Western New York was home to production for A Quiet Place Part 2, which is set to open on May 28th. More on that in just a little bit.
We know from watching and reading news that occasionally movie, television, and music stars visit Buffalo for various projects. Who was in the line at the sub counter at Wegmans when Tina Fey was there picking up lunch for her crew that day? Or Bill Fickner, who's the star of CBS comedy Mom, is a Buffalo alum and a 1972 graduate of Maryvale High School. He comes to town for the occasional Bills games and to visit his family and friends.
And heck, Paula Abdul was just in Buffalo shooting a commercial. But did you know that we actually have a large-scale production stage and are continuously growing here in the Buffalo area? Buffalo Filmworks is the largest major motion picture production studio in the upstate New York area, boasting over 120,000 square feet of stage space and an additional 60,000 square feet of flex space for production support. It's located on Babcock Street in South Buffalo.
The stages are geared for both blockbuster film scale and television series production. Part of the 2019 film Crown Vic, starring Tom Lane and Bridget Moynihan, were filmed as well as The First Purge. That was a 2018 film about the rise of a new political power known as the New Founding Fathers of America, who experiment with making Staten Island lawless for a course of 12 hours, making everything legal, including murder.
Currently, Buffalo Filmworks is working to expand with a new stage four that's likely to open sometime in 2022. Their newest stage is stated to become one of the largest motion picture sound stages in all the world. There have been, I should say, a recent announcement from the Great Point Capital Management Group, which is run by Hallmark Channel founders Robert Halmy and Femi Zico, I believe is the other name, is partnering with Rich Products to build on Niagara Street on the Buffalo City West side.
With an expected completion date sometime this fall, there's going to be a total of 110,000 square feet constructed on the former factory land. A second project known as Buffalo Studios is spearheaded by Emmy-nominated writer and producer Matt Fleckenstein, who is also a Buffalo native. So Fleckenstein's credits include writing and producing for multiple family shows, including iCarly, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Nickelodeon's Nicky, Ricky, Dicky, and Dawn.
The project's going to focus on a 27-acre lot that's on South Park Avenue, and that's going to include a portion of the old steel steel mill land. Six sound stages in all are going to go in there, and they'll have the ability to house live action films as well as animation. Even more exciting is they're going to partner with the University of Buffalo for educational opportunities within the industry.
So as you can see, Buffalo is making huge jumps forward in making our great city a region of motion pictures and production destination. So I know we have a ton of Hallmark fans out there and Hallmark Channel fans, but do you remember the movies A Prince for Christmas that was put out in 2015, A Christmas in Vermont that came out in 2016, and Hope for Christmas in 2018? All of those were filmed in East Aurora. Oh, let's not forget A Special Christmas Dinner in 2019.
So all of these sweet, romantic, cheesy movies that you're just going to eat up, I know. Don't lie to me. I know who you are.
And East Aurora is really the perfect town for that kind of a setting. Get there in all seasons, not just the summertime, but take it in every season of the year. It sports a different look each time, but the experience is just as good.
There's so much to offer there. We all know that there's great food and great drink. There's shopping, and you can really create an action-packed day all in one little town.
A segue into a part of this, you think about the greatest movie that was ever made in Buffalo. Hollywood came to Buffalo during the summer of 1983. This is, now you'll recall, Robert Redford and Glenn Close.
They would use the Queen City as a backdrop for one of the most beloved movies in all of cinematic history. That movie is called The Natural, and it was an adaptation of a Bernard Malamud novel. It was set in the 1930s.
So Buffalo offered the production company a wealth of settings that were perfect for the script. For lovers of the forgotten Buffalo, The Natural did more than just tell the story of a fictional baseball player named Rob Hobbs. It captured on film some of the locations for their very last time, many popular city landmarks.
The production staff had been searching for a location for the summertime scenes, which would authentically recapture the time and spirit of the 1930s as the home of fictional New York Knights baseball team. Filming of The Natural began on August 1st 1983, but weeks into the shooting, Barry Levinson and key members of the crew were scouting locations. Their primary concern was finding that baseball stadium that looked the way stadiums looked in the 30s.
It was quickly determined that there were only three major league parks that were primarily investigated, proving to be worthy of the movie. But the problem was that they had conflicting schedules and they realized that none of these were going to work. So they started looking at big minor league parks of the right size and period.
And early on in the search, the production team was told about a possible stadium in Buffalo, but when they called what would local newsman, I don't know if it was the Buffalo News that they had called, but they were told that the stadium had been torn down. Having gotten pictures of about 50 different stadiums, they covered the country, including travels to Portland, Oregon, Birmingham, Albuquerque, Jamestown, New York, Utica, Rochester, Syracuse, Indianapolis, Jersey City, and Louisville. They even made a trek down to Mexico and Puerto Rico.
But it was on that trip to Louisville when they found the stadium there was completely wrong for what they were looking for, but they thought that the people were absolutely fantastic. So in a conversation that they had with one of the trainers for the Redbirds baseball team there, he had suggested, well, why don't you look at Buffalo? And he was relayed that the stadium had been torn down, but the trainer said, no, we've already played the Bisons there this season. So he called Buffalo and he got in contact with Mike Belani, who at the time was the public relations director.
Now I met Mike back in 2000 and him and I have sat and actually talked about his experiences with Buffalo sports. So he was the public relations director at the time for the Buffalo Bisons and for the team that was owned by Rob Rich Jr. It was explained that the production designer of the movie The Natural that would be coming to Buffalo to take a look at the War Memorial Stadium. So Mike Belani admits that at first, that when he was on the phone, he thought it was a prank.
This was an actual conversation he had had with me back around 2000, 2001. He thought it was a prank, but he said it was best to play it safe. So he sent his best limo to pick up the folks at the airport and drove them not just to see the stadium, but right into the stadium and drove them right up to home plate.
And they had been commented as saying they were kind of, they went out of their minds with the whole experience, because it was like everything that they thought a stadium would be. So the phone calls were made to the larger members of the production group that they had to see it. There was no question about it.
This was going to be their stadium. Anybody who's ever watched The Natural, you might be able to pick up some of Buffalo history if you're a little younger and newer to the scene. Some of these areas are there, some of them aren't there, but you can really get a feel for how much of Buffalo is available in the movie.
One of the big parts is when Rob Hobbs walks through Chicago's Cathedral-like train station with his scout Sam Simpson that's played by actor John Finnegan. The film crew used the main concourse of the Buffalo Central Terminal for the scene in which Hobbs arrives in Chicago back in 1924. When it opened in 1929, just months before the start of the Great Depression, the Buffalo Central Terminal was considered the last word in elegance.
It was designed by architects in New York and considered to be an architectural gem. So the images captured during the filming of The Natural show it in all its glory. The station's Art Deco lighting, the golden clock, the terrazzo flooring, which would never look that way again because in the early 1990s the interior was completely ravaged by vandals, thieves, and treasure hunters.
Years later, the clock as it stands now is back in its location there and they are working on bringing the Central Terminal back to some of its former glory. So they don't use it as a train station anymore, as we know, and it's subject to decades of neglect and vandalism, but it's currently owned by the Central Terminal Restoration Corporation and they are, like I said, doing work on it. It is open to the public during certain special events and tours, but it hasn't been since the COVID pandemic took place.
So if you go to buffalocentralterminal.org, you can read more about the train station and the current status of what they're doing down there. If you look at the central court of the Ellicott Square building down on 295 Main Street, that building was used as the Chicago Hotel lobby in the movie. The court, which is finished in Italian marble, has a mosaic floor and it's canopied under a glass roof that's about 70 by 110 feet.
It is really something to look at as somebody who appreciates architecture. The smoke that was provided for special effects, the lobby had a wonderful turn-of-the-century look and richness to it. The building itself was designed by famed architect D.H. Burnham and at the time of its completion, way back in 1865, it was the largest commercial office structure in the world.
Street cars tracks in front of the Ellicott Square building are actually tracks from Buffalo's light rail rapid transit system that was completed in the 80s, as we know it as the Metro. Then you have War Memorial Stadium. This is the absolute star of the show.
It's known affectionately to all of us here in Buffalo as the Old Rock Pile. The stadium was built between 1935 and 1937 as a New Deal relief project situated on the grounds of an old reservoir. The rock pile arose out of a muddy red clay with the help of an army of about 1,500 federal workers whose shanties and work sheds look like a town sprung up overnight following the discovery of some gold.
It was estimated at just under $1 million. The stadium ended up costing a little less than $3 million in the end, of which the city, with lots of complaints, ended up chipping in about a tenth of that cost. On its completion, sports writers hailed it as a great stadium and it was noted as being one of the finest, pointing out that it is now equipped to accommodate more than 38,000 in attendance, which in Buffalo's case at the time was way too many because they didn't even have the people to be able to fill that if pretty much everybody in the city had gone at that time.
So, despite two periods through the 40s and the 60s, the stadium, whose name was changed four different times beginning with Roche Memorial and ending with War Memorial in 1960, did not find a regular thriving tenant. When the Buffalo Bills, members of the fledgling American Football League, ended their agreement with the rock pile in 1972, the stadium stood empty until 1979. It was written off as officially dead.
In a Sports Illustrated article, Brocks Yates wrote that it was an arena that looked as if whatever war it was in, it was a memorial to those who fought for its confines. So, then in 1983, the rock pile was born anew. Robert Rich Jr., the president of Rich Products, brought the Buffalo Bisons baseball team in and helped refurbish the stadium.
He paid the city about $15,000 in rental and pushed the attendance in the A.A. Eastern League, leading 122,000. In the summer of that same year, The Natural chose the rock pile for its fictional New York Knights ballpark. So, when the producers came in, they spent about a half a million dollars fixing up the ballpark, which had been built, obviously, that we know now in the mid to late 1930s.
The work included building a scoreboard and repainting of the seats in the stands to give it that big league shade of the 1930s, that gray and green color that you see from different movies, including The Natural, of course. About 3,000 people were recruited to play extras in the stands. At then, the minimum wage was $3.35 an hour.
That's what they were paid. Obviously, there still wasn't enough folks to fill the stadium. According to a contributor for the Digital City's Buffalo's Movie Bulletin Board, it was quoted as, F.N. Burt, which was a printing company, made cardboard people to be placed in the stadium during filming to cut back on the cost of extras.
That would become even more influential as we go to the pandemic in 2020, and when the Bisons were playing downtown, they would have some cutout characters there. So, wasn't so much an original idea, now was it? Nothing remains, obviously, of The Natural era. In 1988, we know that the Bisons moved to the new stadium where they're at downtown and left the rock pile.
The site was cleared to make way for a youth athletic field. Only three of the majestic entrances survived, but were not used in the filming of the movie. Parkside Candy, which is 2305 Main Street at Oakwood Place in Buffalo, they began operation in the 1920s at the time of the filming, and it looked much as it did the day that it opened.
In the film, Roy's boyhood love Iris Gaines, played by Glenn Close, walks into Parkside Candy Shop in quote-unquote Chicago. When she hears about Roy and Wonder Boy later, she and Roy meet at Parkside for a lemonade. So, that restaurant closed back in the early 1990s, and the historic interior that you see in the movie was removed.
And in the last 30 years or so, that building has housed offices, one point of daycare center, but a lot of that area is still unused now. The flagship store is now down at 3205 Main Street there in Buffalo, and the neon sign that was also removed, and that location of that sign is to this day unknown. So, if you head down to the new flagship location, or new-ish, at 3205 Main, it has the art deco soda shop style to it, where they can still serve up ice cream and the finest and craft chocolates to you.
The next is All High Stadium, which is to me quite a gem in the city. I've driven past it many times. I've actually parked and gotten out of my car and walked and kind of gandered at it from the I have never in my life been inside of All High Stadium and would really like to be able to check that out someday.
That's located at 50 Mercer Street in Buffalo. So, when Iris attends the Knights game versus Chicago at Wrigley Stadium, as Hobbs is preparing to bat, she stands up in the grandstand and the sunlight brilliantly illuminates her flowing blonde hair and yellow outfit. Now, built in 1929, All High Stadium is located behind Bennett High School, like I said at 50 Mercer Street, just off of Main Street and a short drive from the Parkside Candy location at that original location on Main Street.
So, with a little ivy and the addition of a brick outfield wall, the venerable old site stood in for Wrigley Field at the time. The 1930s era ticket booth and period signs painted on the wall were added for the film and were actually still there up until about 2007. In the outfield, you could see there's a large smokestack where a large 1930s era scoreboard was temporarily constructed for the film atop the Bethune Hall where Chicago fans stood to see the game ticket-free.
That was completely renovated, as we know, All High Stadium back in 2007. So, it's lost a lot of that film appearance during the process, but it's open to the public during sporting events. I'm hoping to one day get there to check out something.
I don't know what I would go see there, but I've always wanted to be inside of that. The Buffalo Psychiatric Center for the hospital scenes. The crews used one of the oldest buildings.
It was originally built in 1895. Architect Harry Richardson is generally regarded by architectural historians as the first of the three greatest American architects. The original two are Louis Sullivan and, of course, Frank Lloyd Wright, all which have works here in Buffalo.
Of the original 10 buildings in the complex, three were torn down back in about 1969. The remaining seven were not in use at the time of filming, so the dignity of the majestic brown sandstones and the red brick building were ideal for the filming. So, that's just a little look at some of the iconic buildings that you'll see in the movie The Natural.
If you haven't watched it, I'm not sure why you're waiting. If you're a lover of all things Buffalo, it is definitely a movie to take in, even if baseball is not your thing. Just to be able to know the history in Buffalo and to know that you have seen these places or you recognize their history or just the nostalgia of knowing that Buffalo was up front in what would be considered the greatest movie that was ever made in Buffalo.
Now, I'm going to switch hats on this because originally I started talking about the movie coming out on the 28th, which is A Quiet Place 2. I'm not going to talk too much about the movie itself, but A Quiet Place 2 is a sequel to the 2018 film A Quiet Place that stars John Krasinski and Emily Blount. The first film was written by Krasinski, Brian Woods, and Scott Beck and it won a Saturn Award for Best Writing. Krasinski directed the film and won the IGN People's Choice Award for Best Director.
The film won Best Sci-Fi Horror Movie in the 2021 Critics Choice Awards. So, the story, if you haven't watched it already, it follows a family that's forced to navigate and survive in a post-apocalyptic world that's inhabited by these blind monsters that have this acute sense of hearing. And I know it's been a few years since the film came out, and I'm going to, like I said, spare details, but for someone who enjoys horror and sci-fi films like I do, I really did enjoy the first movie far more than I thought.
You just have to place yourself in the mindset of a character and their struggles regarding everyday life and then expand that into what is considered routine activity for them on a daily or even weekly basis. Now, you want to compound that with the fact that there's a constant fear factor in play. Multiply that by the number of inches that are left before you fall off the couch from anticipation and boom, there you have a great horror film.
But do it quietly because, well, as we know. So, the film had its world premiere in New York City on March 8th of 2020 and the original film debut was supposed to take place on March
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