I was watching the movie In the Line of Fire the other day, a pretty good thriller with Clint Eastwood and Dylan McDermott as Secret Service agents after John Malkovich, a crazy guy who wants to kill the President. Released in 1993, it takes place mostly in DC, with Eastwood living somewhere Adams Morgan-ish and hanging out at Georgetown bars.
But there’s also a Columbia Heights connection: in one scene where they’ve traced a Malkovich phone call, they scramble to catch him. The supposed location, the St. Francis Hotel on Florida Avenue in Northeast, is actually that building with the round tower at Park Road and Holmead Place. Malkovich escapes on foot and the car with the good guys does a U-turn, and you can clearly see the red doors of the fire station on the other side of the street, next to El Rinconcito II. Where the Giant is now is a grassy lot, seen only briefly.
Then the funny part happens: Malkovich runs into an alley and up a fire escape, and when he gets to the top of the building he’s next to the Capitol. I guess it makes for a more exciting version of DC than suddenly looking over Holmead Place.
It’s always cool to see Columbia Heights in the movies and on TV, and in this case, interesting to see what has changed in the 21+ years since 1993 or so — a lot of the buildings look the same, aside from there being no Giant at all, which later became a real engine for the neighborhood.
