The Swellesley Report

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Movie “Thoroughbred” filming in Wellesley

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Photo credit to reader T.J.

 

A little movie-making magic brought the essence of Hollywood to little old Wellesley Square today as large, equipment-filled trucks commandeered the area, creating bustle, stirring up the curiosity of the locals, and taking up parking spaces (though at least some of the crew was parking on Rte. 9).

Early this morning, my cell phone started blowing up with texts from inquiring minds, pictures of the scene, and wry observations of the hubbub. A quick look at my email showed more of the same. This is why I love Swellesley readers — when something happens around town, they are ON IT.

Here’s the deal: According to the Wellesley police, “There is an independent film company shooting a scene at [the Amarin restaurant on Grove Street].” An additional source noted that a script labeled Thoroughbred was casually lying on the sidewalk. An indie film, Thoroughbred is about two teenage girls in suburban Connecticut who rekindle their unlikely friendship after years of growing apart. In the process, they learn that neither is what she seems to be, and that a murder might solve both of their problems.

The movie is written and directed by award-winning playwright Cory Finley, who is trying his hand at film, and stars Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl);  Anya Taylor-Joy, who has a leading role in the upcoming film Barry which explores the time when Barack Obama was a college student in New York City; and Anton Yelchin, (Star Trek Beyond). Yelchin, for one, may be no stranger to Wellesley since another of his movies, The Greens are Gone, filmed at Elm Bank back in 2014. That movie has not yet been released.

We’re not sure which, if any, of the actors are on location, but it seems likely that soon enough the essence of all that movie-making glitter will take flight and we’ll be back to our plain old Wellesley Square again.

Wellesley has been the location of movie-making in the past, including for The Company Men and Mona Lisa Smile. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past was also filmed in part at Elm Bank. Also,  the Connecticut Lottery has filmed a commercial here.

Linden Square, Wellesley
Riverbend, Natick

Hollywood can’t stay out of Wellesley — “I Care a Lot” movie filming in town

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Wellesley is once again being used as a big movie set, this week for a film called I Care a Lot starring Rosamund Pike of Sundance TV’s State of the Union and Peter Dinklage of Game of Thrones. Film crews have been spotted along the Charles River  walking path at Wellesley Office Park as well as downtown in the old Talbots space, and possibly behind other storefronts.

B/SPOKE Wellesley
Filming of I Care A Lot in Wellesley Square. Photo credit to sharp-eyed reader KC.

Filming is expected to continue at least at the office park on Tuesday, including in the fitness center, according to a Swellesley reader who works at the office park.

The summary for I Care a Lot on IMDB reads: “A legal guardian discovers that her seemingly perfect client is not who they appear to be.”

Wellesley has become a Hollywood hot spot in recent years. In April and June a film crew for an Apple TV series starring Captain America’s Chris Evans and Downton Abbey’s Michelle Dockery shot scenes in Wellesley for a project that has been going by the code-name Cortex. We hear it’s more likely, however, that the real name of the show will be along the lines of Defending Jacob, like the book series on which it’s based.

In 2017, Hollywood types could scarcely stay out of town as crews descended to film scenes for no fewer that four movies:

  • The Leisure Seeker — a retired Wellesley couple decides to coax the old Winnebago out of the garage and onto the open road for one last hurrah of a road trip, starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland
  • We Don’t Belong Here — drama about a dysfunctional family, starring Catherine Keener and Anton Yelchin, shot in part at Elm Bank Reservation
  • Thoroughbred — murder mystery set in Connecticut, but filmed in part in Wellesley Square. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Olivia Cooke
  • Daddy’s Home 2 — with Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, and shot in part at E.A. Davis in Wellesley Square

So many more films have been partially shot here in Wellesley, or Hollywood East as it’s becoming known. See our Wellesley movie round-up page here.

Page Waterman, Wellesley
London Harness, Wellesley
Wellesley Lacrosse

Showtime comedy “SMILF” filming in Wellesley

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Location scout execs for Showtime comedy “SMILF” starring Frankie Shaw and Rosie O’Donnell have chosen Wellesley as a filming location for part of the Golden Globe-nominated show’s second season. The filming crew has been around town this week, particularly over at a drop-dead gorgeous five-bedroom, eight-bath Pembroke Rd. home currently for sale at $3,799,000, in case you’re in the market for a little Hollywood stardust to go with your trophy house.

SMILF in Wellesley
Pembroke Rd. in Wellesley has been chosen as one of the locations for Showtime comedy “SMILF.” Note to the show’s casting department: if you need any extras, we’ve got our own contingent of, well, you know.

 

Showtime’s website says the 30-minute weekly series stars Shaw as Bridgette Bird, “a smart, scrappy, young single mom trying to navigate life in South Boston with an extremely unconventional family. She struggles to make ends meet, which leads her to impulsive and at times immature decisions…SMILF takes on motherhood, co-parenting, and female sexuality through a raw and unfiltered lens.” The show, also created by Shaw, is apparently semi-autobiographical and brings to viewers ” an original and fresh new female voice.”

Fresh, indeed. I can’t tell you what SMILF stands for except to say that the first word is Southie, as in South Boston. The titles of the shows are innocuous enough, all with a food thing going such as “Family-Sized Popcorn & a Can of Wine,” “Chocolate Pudding & a Cooler of Gatorade,” and “Forty-Eight Burnt Cupcakes & Graveyard Rum.” The story lines range from the banal, as when baby daddy Rafi starts dating someone hot (jealousy ensues) to literary like the time when, in a nice twist on the Oedipus story, Bridgette matches with a man on Tinder who she believes to be her estranged father.

Intriguing.

A guy on private security detail told me yesterday that no stars have been onsite yet, but he WOULD say that wouldn’t he? Part of his job description is to shoo away pesky local news types, I’m sure. I’m not encouraging anybody to camp out in hopes of sighting Shaw or mega-star, O’Donnell, but if you happened to snap a pic of any of the action, do send it along.

Although I’d keep a respectful distance from O’Donnell if I were you. Not that she’d get rude or anything, but she’s got a long history with papparazzi, and it’s not pretty. Let’s show her how blase we are about all this in Wellesley.

Because face it, Wellesley is the perfect Hollywood shooting location mostly because of the sophistication of its residents, who have seen all of this so, so many times before. Yup, it’s just another day of lights, camera, action around here for us. We’ve hosted Will Ferrell when he was here shooting Daddy’s Home 2. Back in 2016 we served as location for Thoroughbred. By gosh, even the Connecticut State Lottery, unable to find a single picturesque spot in Fairfield County, has seen fit to film its commercials right in Wellesley Square. Twice.

Other spots the filming crews have been seen for this particular round of summer Hollywood excitement: Oak St. in the Italo-American parking lot, and beyond Wellesley, in nearby Newton.

Thanks to sharp-eyed readers PH and MF.

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Yellow “SET” signs like this have popped up around Wellesley during SMILF filming
Sara Campbell, Wellesley

Oscars night special: Movie with Wellesley link out this week

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A drama/thriller movie called “Thoroughbreds” that was shot in part in Wellesley in 2016 and includes a horse owned by a Wellesley family will hit theaters this week. The movie debuted at the Sundance Film Festival more than a year ago.

There’s not a lot in the trailer to suggest why the movie is called Thoroughbreds, but we do know that the Lowe family’s Odin Impetuous Lowe shows up in a flashback scene.

Odin, which is the stage name that the horse goes by, even has an IMDB page. From that site: “He is hoping to get a part in a police action movie, as he is friends with Mike, the Department of Conservation and Recreation Park Ranger horse.”

Alistair Lowe says the quarter horse belongs to daughter Bec, who graduated from Wellesley High and has been active in theatre. Odin, Lowe says, has not let the movie role go to his head.

Still, the family will not be taking the horse to a screening.

Film crew in Wellesley today, location manager claims it’s “nothing exciting”

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A video location manager has blown into town today, bringing with him a film crew and some bustle to the Rice St. area. I spoke to location manager Jeff MacLean of Bark Productions who seemed flattered by The Swellesley Report attention and told me, “I can’t say what it’s about, but it isn’t really anything very exciting.”

Filming, Rice St.
Neighbors were alerted earlier this week that filming would be taking place at a Rice St. location, near Wellesley HS.

Not very exciting. Hah. He obviously lives a life of travel and glamour, over at the Zakim Bridge one day and off to Suffolk University the next, or so a peek at his client list suggests.  Not that I don’t love Wellesley and our brand of living life to its fullest. It’s grand in its way. Still, when outsiders come in and actual cameras start rolling, my interest is piqued. All he would cop to was that he was filming an interview of a doctor. M.D.? PhD? He wouldn’t say. He did reveal that he was looking forward to lunch at Cafe Mangal. He’ll probably be the one looking all big-time Hollywood, wearing shades, and taking calls. I highly recommend the kebabs, Mr. MacLean.

Thanks to neighborhood tipsters for the heads-up on this.

Filming, Rice St.
This isn’t the first time this photogenic home has smiled pretty for the cameras. A few years back it was ready for its close-up. It seems unchanged by stardom.

MORE:

“Daddy’s Home 2” filmed in Wellesley

Thoroughbred filmed in Wellesley

The Connecticut State Lottery has filmed in Wellesley — twice

Deland, Gibson, Wellesley
Rick Cram, leader

Wellesley sort of appears in upcoming feature film, “The Leisure Seeker”

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A far-away American town gets to pretend it’s Wellesley in an upcoming feature film, The Leisure Seeker, starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. Scheduled for U.S release on January 19, 2018, the movie is about a retired Wellesley couple who decides to coax the old Winnebago out of the garage and onto the open road for one last hurrah of a roadtrip.

They’re hanging out in diners, they’re making friends at campgrounds, and of course their adult children are just sick with worry. Sutherland’s character is a retired high school English teacher with Alzheimer’s, and Mirren’s character also has health challenges so what are they thinking, setting off like that and worrying everybody? So irresponsible.

Although The Leisure Seeker is set partly in Wellesley it wasn’t filmed here, giving another town the acting chance of a lifetime.

The September 3 premier at the Venice International Film Festival garnered mixed reviews for the roadtrip flick. The Telegraph loved it. Variety panned it. I guess it will be up to The Swellesley Report to break the tie when the movie is widely released. I’m sure I will be sufficiently recovered by then from the obvious snub by the organizers of the Venice Film Fest, who apparently left my invitation to the premier somewhere on the cutting room floor.

MORE: Sometimes Wellesley is called upon to dig deep and act like…

New York City (Wellesley as New York, anything goes in the movies)

Connecticut once (Wellesley scratches Christmas itch early for lottery commercial)…

…and Connecticut twice (Movie “Thoroughbred” filming in Wellesley)

Our Wellesley Movie Roundup here

 

Movies filmed in Wellesley, Mass.

A brief look at movies shot in Wellesley as well as those in which Wellesley plays a role:

(Ones we’ve missed? Let us know: theswellesleyreport@gmail.com)

(2019) Knives Out: The circumstances surrounding the death of crime novelist Harlan Thrombey are mysterious, but there’s one thing that renowned Detective Benoit Blanc knows for sure — everyone in the wildly dysfunctional Thrombey family is a suspect. Scenes in the movie include drives through Natick Center, though much of the action takes place in a mansion, the exterior of which is the privately-owned Hill Hurst mansion that once belonged to Hollis Hunnewell and that sits not far off Pond Road and Lake Waban (Knives Out being shot in Wellesey).

(2017) The Leisure Seeker: A far-away American town gets to pretend it’s Wellesley in an upcoming feature film, The Leisure Seeker, starring Helen Mirren and Donald Sutherland. The movie is about a retired Wellesley couple who decides to coax the old Winnebago out of the garage and onto the open road for one last hurrah of a road trip.

(2017) We Don’t Belong Here: Drama about dysfunctional family, starring Catherine Keener and Anton Yelchin, shot in part at Elm Bank Reservation, including on the Cheney Bridge. Originally called The Greens are Gone.

(2017): Thoroughbred: Murder mystery set in Connecticut, but filmed in part in Wellesley Square. Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Anton Yelchin, Olivia Cooke.

(2017) Daddy’s Home 2: Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell return in this comedy sequel that was shot in part at E.A. Davis in Wellesley Square.

(2016) Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War: Documentary co-directed by Ken Burns and Sherborn’s Artemis Joukowsky III, tells the story of the mission by Rev. Waitstill Sharp and his wife, Martha, to rescue hundreds Jewish refugees and political dissidents in Europe before and during World War II. The reason we’re bringing this to your attention is that Rev. Sharp was the minister at the Unitarian church in Wellesley.

(2010) The Company Men: Drama about young men surviving a corporate downsizing. Filmed in part in Cliff Estates area of Wellesley, which was the site of fake snow in some scenes. Starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper.

(2009) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past: Rom-Com starring Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Emma Stone & Michael Douglas, about a serial womenizer haunted by his past flames. Filmed in part at Elm Bank Reservation in Wellesley, including at the old Manor House.

(2003) Mona Lisa Smile: Julia Roberts stars in this story, set and filmed partly at Wellesley College, about women’s choices in the 1950s. Wellesley College’s president at the time issued the most Wellesley of messages regarding the movie and its portrayal of Wellesley College after its release.