Beverly Hills Cop opening scenes

**One Shot** · December-11-20, 11:47 PM

A HD version and really cool to watch. Anyone want to call out some places that are rehabbed or no longer with us?
https://youtu.be/NiuBWPKHTPA

**Honky Tonk** · December-12-20, 08:32 AM

Originally Posted by One Shot

A HD version and really cool to watch. Anyone want to call out some places that are rehabbed or no longer with us?
https://youtu.be/NiuBWPKHTPA

There's a quick shot of Ramsey Bar in the opening scene. The bar was on the corner of Jefferson and I Can't Remember in Delray. I've been in it a couple of times back in the day. And it's no longer around.

**gnome** · December-12-20, 10:55 AM

Off the top of my head.

[[Sorry for the disjointed nature of this post, but please think of it as random thoughts in a notebook)

Most of 30th street is gone where the semi runs through a neighborhood.

Iron street where the chase first started [[not where the cigarette deal went bad) is rehabbed.

Most of the warehouse district is gone.

Grand River around The Viking is Ilitched.

The Jeffries Project where that little boy is spitting milk is gone.

Brush Park is all pretty.

The scene where the semi rams the back of a green taxi was shot in front of the Stephan Foster elementary school. The school was turned into SWAT HQ and was also the place where 10,000 unprocessed rape kits where stores.

I will say this. Those cigarettes where all real untaxed luckies. They were stale and dry and burned like a fuse.

In some scenes you will see people running between the cop cars to pick up cigarettes as they spilled out of the semi. The scenes at Brush and Winder in particular stand out. Those people werenÂ’t stunt people. They just really liked free smokes.

The explosion of a car on 30th street caught a tree and a house on fire.

All the cars where supposed to be drained of gas and the tank rinsed with soap and water. The teamsters were in charge of doing that.

I am believe the Teamsters did their job and that the stunt coordinator installed an explosive charge in the trunk.

I know that the exploding car was tied off with bridge cable to iron stakes driven into the ground.

I also know when the semi hit the back of that car it was sheared off those cables, hit a tree and bounced back into the path of the semi which slammed it forward and around a utility pole.

I also know the eyemo camera recording the scene from ground level was crushed and burned.

I know because I was charged with pushing the button that started the eyemo.

[[An eyemo is a camera placed inside a heavy duty cast iron box. You put them in places where there is a high degree of rumpus. They have a long cable which the poor sap charged with starting the camera has to hold onto and push at just the last second. Realize an eyemo holds a very short load of 35mm so you canÂ’t set it off and let it run for a minute; no, you get maybe 10-15 seconds of screen time maybe less depending if you crank up the film speed to get slo-mo drama. Hence, you wait,wait, wait for just the right second then hit that button. That was my job.

A job not too dissimilar to setting off a claymore. If you know what that is you know what I am referring to. Same job skills. Whites-of-eyes. )

That semi is coming, hits the fruit vendor on Michigan and 30th, the bus skids sideways, picking up speed makes a little veer on 30th and crosses the alley behind the hardware store that is now gone I hit the button.

The semi hits the car, the car is sheared from the cables, explodes, runs up a pipe ramp set to protect this huge ancient oak tree, the car bounces back into the path of the semi which hits the car again and send this now flaming car flyin through the air and wrapping itself around a utility pole.

I was behind that pole.

**Ray1936** · December-12-20, 12:02 PM

Great post, Gnome! Thanks!

**Honky Tonk** · December-12-20, 03:57 PM

Originally Posted by gnome

Off the top of my head.

[[Sorry for the disjointed nature of this post, but please think of it as random thoughts in a notebook)

Most of 30th street is gone where the semi runs through a neighborhood.

Iron street where the chase first started [[not where the cigarette deal went bad) is rehabbed.

Most of the warehouse district is gone.

Grand River around The Viking is Ilitched.

The Jeffries Project where that little boy is spitting milk is gone.

Brush Park is all pretty.

The scene where the semi rams the back of a green taxi was shot in front of the Stephan Foster elementary school. The school was turned into SWAT HQ and was also the place where 10,000 unprocessed rape kits where stores.

I will say this. Those cigarettes where all real untaxed luckies. They were stale and dry and burned like a fuse.

In some scenes you will see people running between the cop cars to pick up cigarettes as they spilled out of the semi. The scenes at Brush and Winder in particular stand out. Those people werenÂ’t stunt people. They just really liked free smokes.

The explosion of a car on 30th street caught a tree and a house on fire.

All the cars where supposed to be drained of gas and the tank rinsed with soap and water. The teamsters were in charge of doing that.

I am believe the Teamsters did their job and that the stunt coordinator installed an explosive charge in the trunk.

I know that the exploding car was tied off with bridge cable to iron stakes driven into the ground.

I also know when the semi hit the back of that car it was sheared off those cables, hit a tree and bounced back into the path of the semi which slammed it forward and around a utility pole.

I also know the eyemo camera recording the scene from ground level was crushed and burned.

I know because I was charged with pushing the button that started the eyemo.

[[An eyemo is a camera placed inside a heavy duty cast iron box. You put them in places where there is a high degree of rumpus. They have a long cable which the poor sap charged with starting the camera has to hold onto and push at just the last second. Realize an eyemo holds a very short load of 35mm so you canÂ’t set it off and let it run for a minute; no, you get maybe 10-15 seconds of screen time maybe less depending if you crank up the film speed to get slo-mo drama. Hence, you wait,wait, wait for just the right second then hit that button. That was my job.

A job not too dissimilar to setting off a claymore. If you know what that is you know what I am referring to. Same job skills. Whites-of-eyes. )

That semi is coming, hits the fruit vendor on Michigan and 30th, the bus skids sideways, picking up speed makes a little veer on 30th and crosses the alley behind the hardware store that is now gone I hit the button.

The semi hits the car, the car is sheared from the cables, explodes, runs up a pipe ramp set to protect this huge ancient oak tree, the car bounces back into the path of the semi which hits the car again and send this now flaming car flyin through the air and wrapping itself around a utility pole.

I was behind that pole.

Great insights into the stunt aspect of movie making. Enjoyed your post and I'm glad you didn't get hurt.

**SammyS** · December-12-20, 09:18 PM

Ransom Gillis at 1.30

**Zacha341** · December-13-20, 05:04 AM

Most AWESOME POST G! Loved it - it read as fast actioned as the scenes. Especially notable about the smokes [[LOL) and your most advantageous vantage point! Hah!

Originally Posted by gnome

...Those cigarettes where all real untaxed luckies. They were stale and dry and burned like a fuse.

In some scenes you will see people running between the cop cars to pick up cigarettes as they spilled out of the semi. The scenes at Brush and Winder in particular stand out. Those people weren’t stunt people. They just really liked free smokes.....

The semi hits the car, the car is sheared from the cables, explodes, runs up a pipe ramp set to protect this huge ancient oak tree, the car bounces back into the path of the semi which hits the car again and send this now flaming car flyin through the air and wrapping itself around a utility pole.

I was behind that pole.

**gnome** · December-13-20, 01:17 PM

So another story isn’t about filming but clean up.

Myself and this guy named Elevator Don were given the impossible chore of cleaning up the disaster created at Brush and Winder.

The company packed up and moved locations so it was Elevator Don, myself, a bunch of trash and a neighborhood.

Debris was everywhere and we had nothing, no brooms, no rakes, no nothing except for a small prop trailer filled with boxes of cigarette cartons.

Smokes and garbage bags.

We did have a bullhorn so i let everyone within earshot know that if they came and got a trash bag from me and returned it full of trash, I’d give them two cartons of luckies.

Sure enough the neighbors descended, got their trash bags and returned it to me full.

Most folks took their smokes, grabbed another bag and went looking for trash.

So Elevator Don and I are soon surrounded by trash bags and a diminished supply of luckies.

We had no way out of there and the neighbors are wanting their smokes.

Keep in mind, the Brewster Projects are two blocks to the east.

Fewer smokes, fewer trash bags so I start stalling by telling jokes or inviting little kids to sing into the bullhorn. Elevator Don is behind me and whispers the smokes are gone.

I have half a box of cartons left and the situation is not good. Any time you give stuff away for free, the folks who show up last are mad.

Real mad.

We still have no way out. No car, bike or helicopter. Nothing but an increasingly angry group of neighbors. And then the pushing starts. What was once a handful is now grown to a hundred or more people and most of them are mad.

Surrounded by trash bags and mad folks and armed with a bullhorn and a half box of luckies.

Then Tony Brassi screeches up in a black Lincoln with it back door open. Tony was about 5’2”, used to drive for Hoffa and was a hard core teamster. Good guy to know .

It was then I flashed to another incident I was in in another country, in another time.

I was surrounded then too by folks that knew I did not belong.

Back to trashville

In front of me is an angry crowd, beyond them is the Lincoln get away vehicle. I raise the box of luckies over my head and feint throwing the box to the left while immediately tossing all the smokes to the right .

Sure enough what happens is most of the crowd fell for the feint but some took the second move.

The result is that people ran into each other and started scrambling for the luckies. Don and I take off and sprint over the bodies and dive head first into Tony Brassi’s Lincoln.

The neighborhood was all cleaned up.

**Sehv313** · December-13-20, 01:18 PM

It's crazy to see how much Detroit has and yet hasn't changed since then.

**mtburb** · December-13-20, 03:50 PM

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/4799...it-free-press/

The chase scene along Winder was filmed at around 12:20 PM on Monday, July 30, 1984. The 30th Street scenes were filmed a few days later.

**EastsideAl** · December-13-20, 05:25 PM

Thanks for those stories Gnome. I was working downtown that summer and I remember driving through some of the carnage of that movie production. The scene setting bits at the beginning of the movie and parts of the chase that follows are actually quite an interesting record of the city as it existed and felt at that time.

**Maof** · December-13-20, 05:48 PM

gnome - Your "clean-up" story sounds like a movie scene itself. Entertaining

**One Shot** · December-14-20, 07:03 PM

Awesome stories Gnome!

**gnome** · December-14-20, 08:03 PM

Glad you guys like them.

—-

In a follow up to the flaming car story....

The homes on 30th street had a very common Detroit feature: almost no front yards. Usually those front yards were fenced and most had overgrown hedges.

The home with that big oak out front had a fence and a hedge along with a family. I was charged with getting the residents off that porch and the other porches on the block.

Most folks went back inside and took up viewing perches upstairs.

But not the folks in that house with the tree. They essentially told me to bugger-off and that I was a fuck for even asking. One resident in particular was not going to move off that porch because his thigh was wrapped in pampers.

Seems the poor gentleman was nursing a through n’ through bullet wound. Having a little experience with such things I asked to see it and sure enough it was as he said. I complimented him on his homemade dressings and gave him a couple of tips on post-wound care then retreated to my post at the eyemo/claymore.

When shit hit the fan I got the hell out of there by running across the street. That’s when the neighbors start screaming that there were kids in the house.

Now remember that that oak caught fire, the hedge, as did the roof itself. I also failed to mention the ground and pavement was burning too.

——

I have to go but promise to fill in more of the tale.

**Zacha341** · December-17-20, 07:35 AM

Keep these details comin' G. They're proving more interesting than the movie itself! ---

---

**Pat001** · December-19-20, 07:05 AM

I was part of a video production crew that was shooting a training video for one of the Big Three car companies at a gas station in Berkley at the same time Beverly Hills Cop was being shot in Detroit. People who saw our vehicles, cameras and lights thought we were the Beverly Hills Cop crew and were looking to catch a glimpse of Eddie Murphy. Nope! Just local Detroit actors and a local Detroit video production crew.