The Georgetown neighborhood may have inspired the 1985 movie “St. Elmo’s Fire,” which marks its 35th anniversary this year, but when it came time to play the part, College Park stepped in.
Joel Schumacher, who co-wrote the script of the seminal ’80s movie that inspired the term “Brat Pack,” was inspired by his time living in D.C., especially the young Georgetown grads he would see around his neighborhood.
The movie was mostly filmed around that area, but when it came time to shoot a scene where Rob Lowe’s character goes back to his old fraternity, Schumacher had to get permission from the university.
During a trip to Washington to scout filming locations, Schumacher met with Georgetown Vice Provost J. Donald Freeze, who turned him down, saying that he read the script and felt that depictions of premarital sex, drug use and other behavior weren’t in keeping with the Jesuit university’s values.
“Joel reminded the Father that ‘The Exorcist’ had shot on the Georgetown campus, and in that movie, a 13-year-old girl pees on a rug and masturbates with a cross,” co-writer Carl Kurlander wrote earlier this year. “Father Freeze told him: ‘Yes, but in that movie, the devil didn’t win.'”
The filmmakers instead turned to the University of Maryland in College Park about using Fraternity Row just off Baltimore Avenue. Fraternity student leaders, who co-managed the property with the college, agreed to the filming as long as they were included as extras. The Sigma Kappa sorority chapter house was substituted for an academic building, and the lawn on Fraternity Row was used for other shots.
By the time the scenes were filmed in October of 1984, Lowe was the heartthrob of the moment. While filming, he was spotted in a station wagon by some students, who “mobbed like The Beatles, with college coeds rocking the car back and forth,” Kurlander recalled.
One scene from the movie lives on, though. Every year, seniors re-enact a shot in front of Sigma Kappa where the cast wore graduation robes.
That’s the first time I’ve heard that zinger by Fr. Freeze (provost, not vice provost). This brought back memories of the filming of St. Elmo’s Fire. My housemates and I were recent Hoya grads living in the neighborhood, and all of the cast trailers and equipment were parked outside our trashy little apartment building because it was the only unfilmable scenery in Georgetown. It was neat to see the Brat Pack outside our front doors every morning. We felt like we were living the movie storyline, although with less sex and no drugs. Probably the denizens of UMD’s Fraternity Row were more in sync with the antics of the movie characters than we were, but the movie made us feel like we were somehow special — representatives of a generation — anyway. Thanks for a great post!
I was living in Georgetown when the movie was being filmed. The couple who owned the small apartment building I lived in lived in a house in the 3000 bock of P Street, where many of the film’s interior scenes were shot.
Wow, thanks for sharing Chris!