Marina City - Cultural References

Cultural References

• The towers are featured on the front cover of the Wilco album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
• The towers are included in a collage on the rear cover of the Sly and the Family Stone album There's a Riot Goin' On.
• The label design used by Mercury Records in the 1970s and early 1980s featured a painting of the towers along with IBM Plaza and John Hancock Center.
• Legendary AM radio station WCFL was located on the sixteenth floor of the office building from 1965 to circa 1985. Studio One looked out over the Chicago River.

The towers have been featured locations in a few film, videogame and television productions:

• The Bob Newhart Show (1972–1978), The opening sequence included a shot of Marina City, leading many to assume that the character lived there. The actual building used for exterior shots of Bob's apartment sits seven miles to the north, on Sheridan Road in the Edgewater neighborhood.
• Three The Hard Way (1974), Jagger Daniels (Fred Williamson) is a resident in one of the towers.
• The Hunter (1980), "Papa" Thorson (Steve McQueen) pursues a suspect in a car chase through the parking garage. His quarry eventually loses control and drives off a high floor of the garage into the Chicago River. This scene was later recreated for an Allstate commercial in 2006/2007.
• Knight Rider’s 1985 season première "Knight of the Juggernaut" when Michael Knight and Marla Simmonds were escaping from Thorsen's henchmen.
• Nothing In Common (1986), the parking ramp was used as a location in the Tom Hanks film.
• British new wave band Thompson Twins use the towers as backdrop in the video for their 1986 single "Nothing in Common", which is part of the official soundtrack for the film Nothing in Common (1986).
• The towers are also often in background shots of Chicago, most notably:
  • Film: The Blues Brothers (1980), Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), Curly Sue (1991), Captain Ron (1992), I, Robot (2004), The Break-Up (2006), The Dark Knight (2008), Wanted (2008)
  • Television: "Tweener" (a 2005 episode of Prison Break)
• Emergency Call Ambulance ( Sega 1999), Arcade racing videogame - the player drives between the towers in the third case, and the towers are visible from a longer distance in the final case as well.
• The towers are a backdrop used in the Nickelback official video Rockstar.