Trashing the Gugg Onscreen

Filmmakers rebuild the Guggenheim, and then tear it to shreds

The real Guggenheim Museum took 16 years to build.  The makers of the new action film “The International” had 16 weeks to reproduce it. 

This Friday, the action film “The International” rolls into theaters starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts.  The film was shot in many locations in New York, but the script called for a chaotic shootout in the Guggenheim, with walls getting riddled with bullets and chandeliers crashing to the ground.  We're betting that one didn’t go over so well with the museum director… 

So director Tom Twyker (“Run Lola Run”) got Frank Lloyd Wright's blueprints with the museum's help, to build a full-scale exact-size replica, according to the New York Post.  Using an old emptied out locomotive warehouse in Berlin, the team built in 16 weeks what it took Wright's people 16 years to complete.

Seems to us like a bang-up job.  A challenge: go see the movie with a friend, then insist that they really shot it in the Guggenheim, and get back to us with what happens.

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