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Reel Toronto: Fever Pitch
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.
We have to admit we kind of like Fever Pitch. Sure, it’s a formulaic rom-com, but it’s a lot better than what we typically have to sit through. More to the point, it makes such great use of its Boston locations (particularly the stuff in and around Fenway Park) that you would hardly know how much of it was shot here.
You’d think interiors would constitute most of the Toronto work but, au contraire, they love our parks. Not once but twice does the couple take a stroll through Queen’s Park. This is the first occasion, and you can see the statue of King Edward VII in the background.
The second time is for a heart-to-heart/barbecue in the northeast quadrant. You can see Victoria University and St. Mike’s in the back there.
Early in the movie is this touch-football game filmed at Withrow Park.
Later, baseball coach Fallon gets some advice from this kid at Connorvale Park.
The production even takes a jaunt down to Niagara Falls during one of those annoying dating montages.
You can’t have a modern romantic comedy unless both the male and female leads have a wacky group of friends! In Drew Barymore’s case, this includes a trio of ladies with whom she works out at Diesel Fitness’ old location on Spadina.
They also go rock climbing at the Toronto Climbing Academy on Broadview.
Later in the movie, one of the friends has this big Great Gatsby–themed party. It’s in the St. Lawrence Hall, where Jimmy and Drew find themselves waiting for a cab afterwards.
Jimmy’s a teacher (all the better for interacting cutely with children), and while the establishing shot is of what must be a Boston school, the interiors were at Givins Shaw PS.
There’s also a scene where he talks with Drew Barrrymore out back, but this scene was done at Western Tech.
They go to a fancy, shmancy restaurant with Drew’s parents and, lo and behold, it’s the Rosewater Supper Club.
Of course, the great bit of trivia here is that the Red Sox were “cursed” as incapable of winning, but as filming went on it became increasingly obvious they might just pull it off. In the end, the Sox won the 2004 World Series, forcing an on-the-fly rewrite and meaning that hundreds of years from now baseball fans will wonder why the hell Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore got to run on the field during the players’ celebrations. And now Toronto gets to share in just a little slice of that; given how this last season went, we might as well take what we can get.
This article originally incorrectly identified two locations: St. Lawrence Hall, which was mistakenly identified as St. Lawrence Market, and Western Technical-Commercial School, which was mistakenly identified as East York Collegiate.