Movie Stills of New York Locations Juxtaposed with Real Life

Journalist Christopher Moloney had an epiphany while walking through Central Park one day,  “Every day I walked past tons of locations from popular—and not-so-popular—movies,” he explains. He decided to start printing out stills from the films and comparing them to their real-life counterparts. “Since then, I’ve re-created more than 250 scenes around the city.” His work—which includes movies as varied as Midnight Run, The French Connection, and Shaft—can be found at his Web site, FILMography.

“I’m actually surprised that locations used in the 1940s and 1950s haven’t changed that much,” he says. “But places used in movies last year are virtually unrecognizable.” New York also changes depending on the director, Moloney adds. “You can tell just how much filmmakers like Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese and Spike Lee love the city. It’s sometimes hard to believe that those three very different places are all the same city.” [via Vanity Fair]

Léon: The Professional, 1994

Christopher Moloney/Filmography

Annie Hall, 1977

"Whenever I see a movie and there's a bookstore scene, I get very sad, because that bookstore is probably gone," Moloney says. "I could never recreate that."

Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961.

The Dark Knight Rises, 2012.

The Royal Tennenbaums, 2001

The Day After Tomorrow, 2004

Leon the Professional, 1994

The French Connection, 1971

The Naked City, 1948

I Am Legend, 2007

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, 1992

Vanilla Sky, 2001