Does brutalist architecture deserve saving? The Trinity Centre Multi-Storey Car Park. Photograph: Sue Barr/View/Rex
In cinema, just as in real estate, location is everything. Something not lost on the fans of Get Carter upon learning that the Gateshead multi-storey car park, the location where Michael Caine launches Alf Roberts from Corrie to his death in the film, is to be demolished.
True enough, it's part of our cinematic heritage but how far can we preserve an architectural atrocity like the car park? My money's on the demolition going ahead as long as the locals see it more as an eyesore than a cinematic landmark.
Of course, not every filmic site is viewed as such by the natives. In the great boxing city of Philadelphia everybody remembers Rocky's sprint up the stairs of the Philadelphia Museum of Art though as Joe Queenan points out, the fact that Rocky's statue sits there and not Joe Frazier's is a matter of civic shame, not civic pride.
Sometimes the location takes top billing. In Picnic at Hanging Rock, the million year-old volcanic formation looms and glowers menacingly. Then again, in The Blair Witch Project you can't see the wood for the trees, but that hasn't stopped the film's fans from making pilgrimages to the Maryland woods where the world's most annoying film students meet their demise.
You'd think the general squalor of Withnail and I would deter followers from seeking out its locations but every year dozens travel to Penrith to demand the finest wines available to humanity from its famous tea rooms. The fact that the tea rooms don't exist as the scene was filmed in Buckinghamshire has crushed many an excitable film buff's heart, but Withnail fans can console themselves with the knowledge that Uncle Monty's London pad is very real and located at 35 Glebe Place, Chelsea.
So what film locations do you think are worth preserving? It may be beautiful in itself like Hanging Rock; maybe there was just one really bitching scene filmed there, or maybe you just fancy annoying some curtain twitching locals (all valid reasons).
I personally have a soft spot for the eponymous Carnival of Souls, though I imagine that's long gone. Is there still time to save your Field of Dreams?
