By David Fleischer

Toronto’s extensive work on the silver screen reveals that, while we have the chameleonic ability to look like anywhere from New York City to Moscow, the disguise doesn’t always hold up to scrutiny. Reel Toronto revels in digging up and displaying the films that attempt to mask, hide, or—in rare cases—proudly display our city.

Remember when Fiddy Cent was the most baddest-ass man on the planet, rappin’ about the gangsta life and all that? Yeah, it’s a bit hazy for us too. But the man was a multi-media superstar way back in 2005.
He was so big they gave him his own semi-autobiographical movie. See, Eminem also got one of those, but he got Curtis Hanson to direct and they shot on the mean streets of his hometown, Detroit. Fiddy here, he also managed to get a dude with some cred (Jim Sheridan!), but while he may really be from the streets of New York, when push came to shove it was time to come north to Toronto to film the sucka.

We get started with some stuff flashing back to 50 Cent’s younger days. The New York street upon which he lives is actually Carlaw Avenue, south of Queen.

There’s a couple of fast school scenes that were shot at Givins Shaw PS.

They also do some hanging out at this fancy fast-,food outlet, actually a Popeye’s on Weston Road.

You gots to have yourself some shootouts, and a pretty big one goes down at this corner store, here. It looks a bit like New York, but it’s actually here, at the corner of Bleecker Street and Howard.

So, if people are getting shot, they must get treated at hospitals, eh? This one is Humber River Regional.

And if things don’t go so well? Well, they get a lovely ceremony here, at the oft-filmed St. John’s Norway Cemetery.

The bad dude operates a club that happens to be the soon-to-be-departed Big Bop.

You can get a bit of a better view here, when the crowd clears out and you can see the distinctive tiled floor.

Fiddy and his homeboys have themselves something of a rendezvous and you can see a bit of our glorious skyline behind the car here. That would place homeboy on Villiers Street, with a view awfully close to this one.

More bad doings here, at the former Canary Restaurant. There’s some love for the interior…

…and the front window.

After being shot, 50 Cent understandably wants to get in touch with younger, happier times, so he heads out to chill at Wasaga Beach.
Then it’s only a matter of time until dude gets his mojo back, puts on his Yankees cap, and hits the stage, the gangsta life and all that horrible stuff behind him and an acting career ahead.
According to his Wikipedia entry (which actually has a subsection called “Other Feuds“), his net worth today is $440 million, so it’s abundantly obvious he didn’t die tryin’, and that’s a message we can all get behind.