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West Point Military Academy
“Man will do most anything to cheat death, won’t he?”
Patsy (Charlotte Gainsbourg)
The Pale Blue Eye is not the first work of fiction to be set at West Point Military Academy. These include the North and South and Star Trek: Enterprise series, the Jack Reacher saga novels and the films Gone with the Wind and The General’s Daughter. Despite this, West Point has always remained very closed to filming. So director Scott Cooper’s team had to find an alternative.
Westminster in place of West Point
It was around Pittsburgh, where the production was based from the beginning, that the location team chose Westminster College in New Wilmington to recreate the West Point Military Academy. Covered in snow, filmed from certain precise angles, Westminster College makes a very convincing stand-in on the screen. The fact that the West Point Military Academy is a rather secret place helped to feed the illusion.
From actor to director
Scott Cooper began his career in front of the camera before directing his first successful feature films. He confided in Scriptmag about his career: “I was an actor with an unremarkable career who was finding himself as a bride’s maid in a lot of movies that I wanted to be in. My mentor at the time whom I was working with, Robert Duvall, said, ‘You should try writing. That’s what I did. I wrote The Apostle for myself.’ And, of course, I didn’t end up writing something for myself, but I ended up writing a screenplay for Jeff Bridges called Crazy Heart. which turned out to be my first film.“
The Pale Blue Eye is the eighth film in which Harry Melling has acted since the end of the Harry Potter saga.
Westminster College
Home to around 1,300 students, Westminster College was founded in 1852. It is attached to the Presbyterian Church.
Known for having hosted filmmaker Wes Craven on its benches, Westminster College also taught another horror cador, makeup artist and director Greg Nicotero. The campus is located less than 100 km from Pittsburgh and has its own radio station, called Titan Radio. In 2010, Westminster College came in for the top spot in Forbes magazine as the best college for women in science, technology, engineering, and math.
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By Gilles Rolland
Passionné de cinéma, de rock and roll, de séries TV et de littérature. Rédacteur de presse et auteur des livres Le Heavy Metal au cinéma, Paroles de fans Guns N' Roses, Paroles de fans Rammstein et Welcome to my Jungle : 100 albums rock et autres anecdotes dépareillées. Adore également voyager à la recherche des lieux les plus emblématiques de la pop culture.