I recently received a call from a hotel concierge asking if I did tours of Toronto that cover famous locations used in film and television. As a film buff and local tour guide, I know many places that have been seen on screen. After all, Toronto has a reputation as a popular city for making motion pictures. Next to Hollywood and New York City, there isn’t another place in North America that is home to more film and TV productions (although Vancouver is coming close). However, most of Toronto locations (and often the films they are in) are obscure and not easily recognized, so it had never occurred to me that a tour of just movie-shoot locations would be all that interesting.

The Canadian Big Apple

Toronto has spent years playing the part of other cities – most often New York or Chicago. While Toronto does not usually ‘star’ in a major motion picture, it has had a few celluloid moments. Off the top of my head, there are Owning Mahowny, Chloe, The Hurricane, the upcoming Scott Pilgrim vs The World and the Canadian classic Down the Road.

But rarely do familiar Toronto landmarks (like the CN Tower or City Hall) actually make an appearance in movies since few are set in Toronto; the cameras cleverly keep those landmarks out of the frame. Most often, movies are shot on side streets, in back alleys, around old industrial sites and inside heritage properties (like a pub owned by a friend of mine) – parts of the city that only locals would recognize. I think you really have to be a certain kind of movie geek (like myself) to get a kick out of seeing an alleyway Samuel L. Jackson and Geena Davis ducked down in 1996′s The Long Kiss Goodnight.

Fancy a Little ‘Extra’ Work on the Side?

Having said that, there are a lot of movies being filmed in Toronto throughout the year and there’s a good chance you’ll see the white trucks and trailers used by production companies as dressing rooms, mobile makeup departments and equipment storage. Gaffers, key grips and teamsters are everywhere. Asking one of them for an autograph could be fun, since, unfortunately, star sightings are a lot less common.

While exploring the city, you just might also end up stumbling onto a live set and joining in with the rest of the extras as I did about 10 years ago during the filming of John Q, starring Denzel Washington. A large crowd had assembled around TV news vans and police cars and when I saw it was a movie shoot, I slipped into the crowd and followed the directions given to us (‘hide your jackets,’ ‘cheer like crazy when a hostage is released,’ etc). Did I catch a glimpse of Denzel? No. Can you see me on screen in the cheering crowd? Not unless you have HD TV and much better eyes than me.

Rubbing Shoulders with the Stars

One of the things that does make Toronto an exciting place for film buffs is the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). For a little more than a week every autumn, A-list celebrities, actors, fans and paparazzi converge on Toronto. Now one of the largest film festivals in the world, TIFF has become an important place to see new films and, for many, a place where you can rub elbows with stars.

Big names like coming to Toronto. They like the food, the shopping, the sights and sounds of the city (live music, art galleries, etc) and, most importantly, the people. Here, movie stars can let their guard down a little more than usual. They can walk the streets without being mobbed (unless you’re Brad Pitt or George Clooney, I suppose) and do some things they probably wouldn’t do in Hollywood.

During last year’s TIFF, Drew Barrymore hopped behind the bar at Sweaty Betty’s and served drinks to customers. Also last year, LeVar Burton (who played Geordi LaForge on Star Trek: the Next Generation) sent a tweet to all of his Twitter followers in Toronto inviting everyone to meet up for a beer. I went (along with a few dozen others) and was actually able to have a conversation with him. As the former host of Reading Rainbow (a TV show I watched throughout my childhood) and a character on Star Trek, he was one of my favorite actors. Organizing the ‘tweet-up’ and chatting with all of us revealed that he was an incredibly nice guy and now ranks as one of my all-time favorite people. He said that he would never do something like that back in LA. He said Canadians were cool and he felt comfortable doing this sort of informal meet-and-greet in Toronto. He called us ‘chill.’

Toronto is a city that may look like other places on screen, but there really is a distinct feeling to it that you can really only sense when you’re here. We’re good at playing New York or Chicago on screen, but in real life we’re very unlike either of those cities. There’s a reason Toronto is popular with production crews, movie stars and film buffs, and I think it has more to do with the true character of this city, what its people are like and all the things that happen off camera.

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