Peter Jackson’s Scenes From A Mall

August 12, 2009 • 10:29 pm • POSTED BY Jim Walls

The trailer for Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” is up on Apple’s site.

My wife and I have been waiting for this one for awhile. She’s primarily interested because she seemed to enjoy the Alice Sebold book it’s based on, while I’m into it because it was filmed in and around the Philly suburbs where we both grew up and still live.

Part of the movie (or at least a scene) takes place in MacDade Mall, a local shopping center where I was gainfully employed in the late 80s by both The Radio Shack (selling Tandys and Optimus car stereos at a 6.75% commission, and no, we never called it “The Shack”) and The Carlton Shop, locally infamous for selling cut-rate Bugle Boys, Triple Fat Goose jackets, and knockoff pairs of “Z. Cavaruccis.” The mall has been largely abandoned for at least half a decade but has strangely remained open, flanked on both ends by an Acme and a Kmart, with a lonely Fashion Bug remaining the only store open in an otherwise empty mall.

Along comes Peter Jackson, who—from what I hear—has an obsession for detail in his sets. The Lovely Bones crew spent several weeks preparing the mall for the shoot. And not just a store here or there, but the entire mall, circa 1971. From the food court and a movie theater (now showing: “Live and Let Die,” “American Graffiti”), to a head shop and record store (pristine Bowie albums in cellophane in the racks). I visited the set back in December 2007, and the result was nothing short of fascinating. Jackson’s storied level of detail was there, down to period Mastercard and Diners Club stickers on the storefront windows.

I was able to get off a number of blurry iPhone shots but Dylan Sheridan, a set dresser on the crew, did a much better job of documenting his work. So here’s a look at the mall from “The Lovely Bones” from both of our perspectives.

Every store in the mall had beautiful vintage signage, some intricately backlit:

“Love” head shop, selling beaded curtains, jeans patches, and Led Zep blacklight posters:

Top Tunes Records. The racks were fully stocked with multiple copies of vintage LPs, just in case someone in the theater can read the spines, I guess:

Love the classic oil lamp in the window:

Movie theater marquee:

I unfortunately forget the other pictures and showtimes, but they were all awesome:

Bauermans Furniture. Window signage was advertising a holiday sale:

Toto’s Toy Town, complete with a working train layout, which the set dressers were detailing with foliage. I wonder how that figures into the film:

The toy store was fully stocked with 1971 toys and board games. Stay Alive, anyone?

Bobo’s Big Sandwiches getting the hand-painted sign treatment. I wish stores these days applied this level of care and detail to their signage:

I’m pretty sure my mom shopped at the Baste ‘n’ Stitch. And my wife would shop there today:

The newsstand was a study in detail:

This nondescript store at the end of the mall used to be the smoke-filled Time Zone arcade, where I once spent an entire summer’s salary on Spy Hunter. That was before I discovered booze:

I know several photographers who would buy the entire stock of this store, even at today’s prices:

And finally, the lunch counter. Which was actually a lunch counter in the mall’s heyday. Part of me was hoping that some genius developer would walk in, declare the mall “perfect,” buy the whole thing outright and just reopen all the stores as-is.