🚀 go-pugleaf

Steve Lionel (lionel@quark.enet.dec.com) wrote:

: In article <39bjag$ru0@spitfire.navo.navy.mil>, booda@lynx.navo.navy.mil 
: (Martin H. Booda) writes:
: |>    This is a totally unrelated question.  Sixteen years ago I saw the movie
: |>_Coma_ in Greenfield, Massachusetts.  The next day I drove from Greenfield to
: |>Cape Cod for the weekend.  I got on the Boston Outer Loop at Maynard, and
: |>nearly drove off the road when I looked to my left and saw...the Jefferson
: |>Institute!  (In _Coma_, the Jefferson Institute was where the comatose bodies
: |>were kept in cold storage, suspended by wires, pending organ harvest.)  It
: |>looked exactly like the grim, sterile building in the movie, complete with
: |>guard gate and "Moat".
: |>    It was the DEC building on the Outer Loop in Maynard.
: |>    So, can anyone confirm or deny this?  Was I having a paranoid hallucination
: |>or was I on the money?  The resemblance was startling.  Was the DEC building
: |>used for a location shot in _Coma_?

: I posted your question in one of our internal notes conferences and got
: the response that the building in the movie was a Xerox facility somewhere
: off of Mass. Rt. 128.  A Digital employee who worked there when the movie was
: made said that the building was used for many exterior and interior shots.

: I'm a bit puzzled at your reference to the "Boston Outer Loop at Maynard".
: The two "loop" roads around Boston are Rt. 128 (now called I95 for most of
: its length), which is about 11 miles outside of Boston, and I495 which is
: about 30 miles out.  Maynard isn't on either of these routes - there's
: a Maynard exit on I495 but the town itself is several miles to the east.

: If you were driving to Cape Cod from Greenfield, you would be extremely
: unlikely to drive through Maynard (unless you loved driving on back roads
: for no good reason).  The Coma building doesn't overlook 128 (at least its
: front doesn't), so I don't think you would have seen it there.
: -- 

Hmmm, for some reason, I am suddenly reminded of that Saturday Night Live
sketch about a quiz show in which a group of New Englander contestants
have to give directions to various locations in New England.  :-)

For what it's worth, if the Coma building is an old-looking 
brick structure, that would probably explain the confusion.  
Massachusetts is full of old brick buildings, many of them left over from 
the days of the industrial revolution.

Mike