Skip to main content

A Mall and a Movie: Monroeville Mall/Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)

 

Monroeville Mall: the Zombiest mall of all.


Welcome back to a mall and a movie, with me, flannelkimono!

Today's movie is a personal favorite. Why, do you ask? I was in this movie! <3

I love Kevin Smith's movies. Many, many years ago, longtime homie and pop culture vulture SuperNoBueno used to work at a video store that I frequented. His staff picks were always solid, and that was how I saw Clerks for the first time.

Clerks blew my mind, because I was at the time toiling away in thankless retail jobs, and I couldn't believe how many "I'm not even supposed to be here today!" moments I would have at work. We also fucked off supremely at said retail jobs, just like in Clerks, although  nobody ever fucked a dead guy on the clock that I know of.

I was very active on the View Askew boards, because when I like something, I REALLY like it and want to know everything about it. The community of fans at the time were great, and I have always loved and appreciated how Kevin Smith has interacted with and treated his fans.

When he was shooting Zack and Miri in Pittsburgh, he posted on the message board that he was opening up one day of shooting at the mall for extras from the message board. I immediately requested the day off of work, and asked my sister to go with me. We worked together, and she called off to go with me, because why would we want to miss this opportunity? We left Akron when it  was still dark, and got to the mall. We were Christmas shoppers in a black Friday scene at the mall. Perfect, right?

 

WHAT MALL IS THE STAR OF THE MOVIE? 

Monroeville Mall, which was made famous Zach and Delaney work at the Bean n Gone coffee shop, which is located in a plaza near the mall. Miri works in the mall, which she mentions in the scene where she is trying on dresses for the class reunion (the dresses came from a girl who worked at Teen Juice, who Miri got a good deal on yarn). 

This is the mall made famous by George Romero's Dawn of the Dead, a movie I will eventually get to, I'm sure. 

There's really only one scene in the movie with the mall in it. You see a quick shot of the exterior, and then you're walking through the mall with Zack and Delaney. They end up on the escalator, and Delaney gives Zack the money he had saved to buy a big screen TV to buy a camera instead. My sister and I rode up behind them on that escalator a bunch of times. 

IS THE MALL STILL THERE? 

Monroeville Mall, as San Francisco International Airport in Mindhunter.

 

Yep! It was used recently in the show Mindhunter as a stand-in for an airport. I haven't been there since the day we did the movie, but as far as I know, it's still a fairly thriving mall in that area. 

IS THIS MOVIE ANY GOOD?

Yes. I love the sweetness of Zack and Miri's friendship, despite also being really really terrible at being adults. I also absolutely love a few of Smith's music choices: the scene where The Pixies "Hey" is playing rips my heart apart every single time. And the use of Live's "Hold Me Up" during the point of entry (so to speak) was really good, too.

The cast in general is really great. Craig Robinson is hilarious. The stand-out for me is Justin Long as Brandon St. Randy. So good.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Customer Service Can't Help You, Buddy

  I read recently that most Simon owned malls have removed their customer service desks over the past year. I worked in a Simon mall for years, and was reminded of an asshole customer story, again from the Big Coffee Shop that I worked for. Since we were in the mall, the majority of our regulars were people who also worked in the mall. One day, this guy started coming to the shop. He'd order a venti latte, extra hot, with mint syrup. Not even a mocha, this maniac was drinking hot mint milk with coffee in it. He would go, drink a bit of the drink, and then bring it back to us, complaining that it wasn't hot enough, or there wasn't enough mint syrup in it. He came in nearly every day for weeks, doing the same thing: order the drink, drink a little, bring it back and load it down with syrup and HOT HOT milk. Most of my fellow baristas would remake the drink, and LOAD the damn thing with syrup. Other baristas would follow the recipe (which I believe a large only got 5 shots of

Shiny Happy People, 1978

 I love this ad for Rolling Acres Mall, my childhood mall located in Akron, Ohio. The ad is for the expansion of the mall, which included the bubble elevator. 

Mall Mixtape: Tiffany "I Think We're Alone Now"

  Welcome to the Mall Mixtape! This is where we will discuss all of those songs and videos that take us to the mall. The obvious starting point (at least for me, a Gen-Xer), has to be 80's pop darling Tiffany and her breakout hit, 1987's "I Think We're Alone Now". This was a cover of a song first made popular by Tommy James and the Shondells in 1967. But, by the consumer driven mall frenzy of the late eighties, nobody remembered that.  First, here's the video. Watch it in all of it's mid eighties shot on VHS glory.    My MST3K-style notes: Tiffany was killing it with those hand flourishes.  I identify as the girl with the big hair who is singing every single word (you'll see her). The video is pure chaos. She goes from sexy train hobo to mall performing teen queen to dancing on a boardwalk in very fast succession. Also, none of her outdoor looks are actually seasonally appropriate. Why is she wearing shoulder pads at the beach like a divorcee at h