North Park Center - Television and Film Location

Television and Film Location

NorthPark's interior has been frequently used for television and film.

Dr. T and the Women, the Robert Altman film, has one scene in which the character Kate (Farrah Fawcett) visits stores in the area of the Neiman Marcus court, then is seen around the Dillard's court fountain—which she eventually finds herself in, frolicking and splashing in the buff.

True Stories, a 1986 movie co-starring David Byrne, with one scene of a fashion show held at a mall in Virgil, Texas (the movie's fictional setting) during a town celebration; the interior portion of the scene was filmed in a mid-court area between Neiman Marcus and Dillard's. When the mall was reopened in 2006, The Dallas Observer used the mall's ambiance as documented in the film as a source of comparison. "The place looks like a tricked-out spaceship compared to the stark, cold NorthPark in which True Stories was filmed exactly 20 years ago. It looks like the old NorthPark--damned if you can tell difference between the old bricks and the new ones; this thing looks like it was built in a time machine--yet it's brighter too, a friendlier version of the same ol' place." Amusingly, the exterior of Virgil's mall wasn't of NorthPark—the producers used the outside of the former Big Town Mall in nearby Mesquite.

When the shopping center first opened television station WFAA-TV Channel 8 built a studio the broadcast local television shows Sump'n Else and Away We Go. Sump'n Else was a local music bandstand program starring KLIF-AM DJ Ron Chapman and local teen idol television and radio broadcaster Ralph Baker Jr who also hosted a show on KLIF-AM while doing Sump'n Else. The station had formed a television dance group called The Little Group. Before the station had a television bandstand show called The Group And Chapman which was broadcast from WFAA Communications Center Studios in Downtown Dallas. The reason the station opened a studio in Northpark was so that people who were not in the audience could also see a live broadcast through the studios glass windows. Away We Go was a local game show hosted by Ron Chapman.

Read more about this topic:  North Park Center

Famous quotes containing the words television and/or film:

    It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.
    Marie Winn (20th century)

    To read a newspaper for the first time is like coming into a film that has been on for an hour. Newspapers are like serials. To understand them you have to take knowledge to them; the knowledge that serves best is the knowledge provided by the newspaper itself.
    —V.S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad)