Baltimore, a city in the US state of
Maryland, has been described by some as "Charm City", by others as "Bodymore, Murderland".[1]F. Scott Fitzgerald, who lived there for five years in the 1930s, wrote of it, "I belong here, where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite."[2]
Filmmakers explained their choice of Baltimore as a setting for the 2009 movie He's Just Not That Into You because "We were trying to think of an American urban city that didn't feel like you'd seen it a million times before," and "We wanted something like, not exactly every-small-town U.S.A., but every-urban-young-center U.S.A., so we could all see ourselves in these people."[4]
Baltimore native
Tom Clancy, a graduate of
Loyola Blakefield and
Loyola College in Maryland, often includes Baltimore and other parts of Maryland in his action/spy thriller novels and their corresponding feature films.
Maryland native
Nora Roberts also uses Maryland and particularly parts of the
Chesapeake Bay as settings for her novels. This includes Baltimore in such novels as Inner Harbor.
Anne Tyler lived in Baltimore for many years, and many of her books are set there, including The Accidental Tourist, which was also made into a movie.
Laura Lippman is the author of detective fiction set in Baltimore, most notably the Tess Monaghan novels. Lippman is the wife of David Simon.
The fictional character,
Jane Porter,
Tarzan's love interest, is a native of Baltimore and the last part of the first Tarzan novel, Tarzan of the Apes, is set there.
Tim Cockey's mystery novel series, starring the character Hitchcock Sewell, is based in Baltimore.
Jamie Wasserman's novel Blood and Sunlight is set in nearby Ellicott City with several scenes in Baltimore as well.
All For The Game trilogy's main character Neil Josten was born and raised in Baltimore by his mother, Mary Hatford, and his father, Nathan Wesninski, the organized crime leader known as the Butcher of Baltimore.
Amos Burton from The Expanse series was born and raised in Baltimore.
A significant portion of the
Terry Gilliam science fiction thriller 12 Monkeys takes place in Baltimore.
John Waters' films are all set in Baltimore, and they have all premiered at the historic
Senator Theatre.
The musical Hairspray (directed by John Waters) and its
2007 film adaptation are set in 1960s Baltimore and feature the song "Good Morning Baltimore".
Steve Guttenberg appeared in
The Bedroom Window in 1987. The exterior view of the bedroom window was done from a parking lot on
Eager Street. The interior views showed that the windows overlooked the Mt. Vernon park and monument, nearly 2 blocks away.
Meg Ryan's character in Sleepless in Seattle, Annie Reed, works for The Baltimore Sun and some of the scenes are shot at the paper's offices on North Calvert Street.
XXX: State of the Union. The Capitol Cars that is supposed to be South D.C. is the Abandoned American Brewery from
N. Gay St. Other scenes that are reported to be in D.C. area also filmed in Baltimore.
In the Alfred Hitchcock film Marnie, the title character is from Baltimore and consequently a portion of the film is set in Baltimore.
In The Invasion (2007) starring
Nicole Kidman she escapes Washington D.C. for Baltimore. Both appropriately filmed. But she gets in her car, in Baltimore and it has D.C. license plates.
The 2009 romantic comedy He's Just Not That Into You was set in Baltimore. Outside scenes were filmed in Baltimore though inside scenes were filmed in Los Angeles. Producers chose Baltimore as their setting as it had not been used as the setting for romantic comedies.
The 2010 independent movie Putty Hill takes place in Baltimore county. After Cory overdosed himself, people he knew were interviewed to reflect the life they've been through. Some of them lives in his neighborhood Putty Hill, some down in Baltimore city, some moved to other states and traveled all the way back for the funeral.
The 2012 film LUV was set and filmed in Baltimore, parts of which were filmed in the subway system.
In season 7 of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Mike Keppler, Grissom's temporary replacement, touches a dead body, to which Catherine Willows says, "Is that how they do it in Baltimore?"
In season two of House an episode took place in Baltimore
Hot L Baltimore, a play by
Lanford Wilson (and later a short-lived Norman Lear comedy), takes place in a hotel in inner-city Baltimore.
An episode of NCIS titled "Baltimore" is set as a flashback of a character's days working for the Baltimore City Police Department.
The
NBC series Hannibal is set in Baltimore, although it is filmed in Toronto, Ontario.
The Supernatural episode "The Usual Suspects" is set in Baltimore.
The
HBO series We Own This City is set AND filmed in Baltimore, and covers the Gun Trace Task Force, a corrupt element of the Baltimore City Police Department.
Miscellaneous
The classic
Cole Porter musical "
Kiss Me, Kate" is set at Baltimore's Ford Theatre and the alleyways behind it.
Baltimore is featured in an
Internet meme based on a vulgar 1990 parody commercial for fictional car dealership Big Bill Hell's Cars, notably including the beginning statement, "Fuck you Baltimore!" This commercial was made as an inside joke for a local advertising awards banquet; a copy left at
WBFF-TV (where the ad had been edited) somehow escaped from the station and was eventually uploaded to YouTube and spread around the Internet.[7]