The life and death of Spielberg's gas station

Set design gets taken down

By Al Sullivan
Reporter senior staff writer

For many people in Bayonne, the most visible and longest lasting sign of Steven Spielberg's filming was the sudden construction of a duplicate Harrington's service station at the foot of the Bayonne Bridge.

The original Harrington's is located three blocks up from the bridge. But Spielberg being the Spielberg, he decided he needed to locate the facility within clear view of the massive arches the bridge provided.

Spielberg originally intended to blow up the station as part the dramatic initial battle scene surrounding the movie's main character Ray Ferrier, played by Tom Cruise. But objections by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey forced him to alter his plan and depict the destruction scene as a computer generated special effect. This was not much of a burden since his plans already called for a computer wipe out of the block of houses he had contracted to use for his outdoor scenes - the block in which the main character lived.

Paramount studios negotiated with the local Little League for use of its baseball field for the construction of the station, and for more than a month leading up to the actual film shoot, residents from near and far gathered on the corner to watch the infield paved over and a building that almost resembled Harrington's rise in its place.

Those most familiar with the original observed the principle difference right away. The garage doors - which would eventually hold a car lift and an assortment of tools that resembled a real gas station - were located on the wrong side. The original a few blocks up the street had these doors situated to the left of the entrance. This model had them situated on the right. The only exterior change the studio had intended to make was an elimination of the second floor in order to maintain a clear view of the bridge. But, of course, Paramount can always claim artistic license.

Looking for authenticity, Paramount's people studied the interior of the station as well as the outside, taking duplicating the photos of race cars the owner kept on the walls as well as photos of young people on motorcycles - these to become part of the back story for the main character Cruise would play.

Most of the outdoor signs the gas station used came from another repair place across the street which is slated for demolition to make way for townhouses. The owner didn't even ask a purchasing price, telling the staff he would only have to toss the signs out anyway.

While Tom Cruise sightings became common (the way Elvis sightings might) especially after his visit to several local eateries in search of espresso, for most residents with whom the studio had made no deals for use of yards or houses, the gas station became their connection to the block buster movie being filmed in their midst, something to which they could make pilgrimage. People gathered for each stage of its construction, talking over the reported details of what might transpire here. Each new detail brought out new theories of the film's content and what this part of the filming meant.

Although the fictional landscape Spielberg had based the film was across the bay in the Ironbound section of Newark (one sign on the gas station bore testimony to the truth of this report as did later film shoots done on the streets of Newark), everything about the structure and its location suggested Bayonne - with the bridge and its might concrete ever-present arches the most revealing element.

Despite the slight deviation from reality, the gas station was so life like in its depiction of a station you might find along the roadside throughout Hudson County that security people complained about drivers trying to pull up to its pumps for service. Few out of towers who had come across the bridge from Staten Island or had wandered from other parts of the state, believed security that the place was not real, that the pumps would not issue gasoline and that the lifts that held the vehicles above ground were not there to provide space for mechanics.

After the initial shock some resident got so use to the look of the station they suggested it might remain there as a reminder of Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise after they had gone. This idea, of course, might have offended the kids who waited for opening day in the spring of 2005 when they would need the field again for baseball. So on a cold day in early December, Paramount's crews returned to take down what they had put up.

"This part is easier," one worker told me. "There's less pressure to get it done."

So piece by piece the structure was disassembled, crews working carting each segment to a pile while the more useful pieces of the set, the lifts, the pumps and other items that decorated the office and the walls, waited for the moving van to cart them back to Hollywood.