The Movie Locations of Reno

Reno has provided the setting for many a good movie. In other films, it has happily filled the role of another town, notably Vegas or San Francisco. Among the films produced in or around the Reno and Lake Tahoe area, there is a whole load of movies, from the classic to the mere memorable, for visitors to the city to know. Featuring plenty of famous titles, these are some of the listed movie locations of Nevada’s much beloved Biggest Little City in the World.

About 60 miles east of Reno is the NAS Naval Air Station in Fallon, which served as the fighter school in the film “Top Gun.” Filmed in 1986, the movie stars Tom Cruise as Lieutenant Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, a naval aviator who is undertaking his flight training at the facility and all the aerial action scenes were shot here. The NAS Naval Air Station was used again eight years later when Harrison Ford rolled up playing the role of CIA analyst Jack Ryan in “Clear and Present Danger.” It was the follow-up movie to “Patriot Games” and featured rogue American agents and not so subtle references to the leader of a Colombian cartel.

Moving into town, the National Bowling Stadium was used for the climax to the mid-90s bowling comedy “Kingpin.” The film’s big climax was shot here while other scenes were recorded in the Silver Legacy Resort Casino. Visitors to Reno who have seen “Sister Act” will recognize that St. Paul’s Catholic Church isn’t, in fact, in San Francisco, but instead, a picturesque spot on the tourist’s map of Reno. In fact, most of the film was recorded here. In the plot, the star of the film, Whoopi Goldberg, plays a Reno singer who goes on the run to escape her boyfriend, Harvey Keitel, dressed as a nun in a San Francisco convent.

Of course, in a town famous for its live-in-the-moment attitude, chasing the dream is a prominent theme in Reno films. As such, it has played home to some of the finest casino-themed films of the last quarter of a century. Two that immediately come to mind are “The Cooler,” from 2003, and “Hard Eight,” shot in 1996. Starring William H. Macy and Alec Baldwin, “The Cooler” was shot at Reno’s former Golden Phoenix and follows a frequenter to the casino looking to turn his situation around. In “Hard Eight,” on the other hand, we meet a 60-year-old player befriending a local loser and teaching him how to win big in casinos. All is not as it seems, and the old man’s intentions become clearer as the movie progresses, but all we can tell you is that the film was shot almost in its entirety on the Reno Strip.

Of course, it would be remiss to omit one of Lake Tahoe’s most famous roles. Fleur du Lac, on the lake’s West Shore, was the setting for the infamous betrayal acknowledgment scene in 1974’s “The Godfather Part II” where Michael Corleone, played by Al Pacino, clasps Fredo’s head and utters the immortal line: “I know it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.”

The star of “The Godfather Part 1,” James Caan, appeared in the 1990 thriller “Misery,” based on the Stephen King best-seller, which fooled viewers into thinking that Truckee’s Donner Summit in the Sierra Nevada was, in fact, the Colorado Rockies while scenes for “The Bodyguard” were shot at Fallen Leaf Lake, southwest of Lake Tahoe. One of the most famous early movies shot here was Charlie Chaplin’s “The Gold Rush” in 1925, again on Truckee’s Donner Summit, and 1961’s “The Misfits,” a horsey drama starring Marilyn Monroe, was also shot nearby, largely in Dayton, Stagecoach.

Finally, “Pink Cadillac,” starring Clint Eastwood as bounty hunter Tommy Nowak, has scenes filmed around the Reno Arch and in Carson City while another star of the Western, John Wayne, recorded his last movie, “The Shootist,” in Washoe Lake State Park in 1976. So, you see, if you’re ever in Reno, you are probably closer to a little bit of Hollywood history than you think as this Nevada town, so often in the shadow of the much louder Vegas, has a rich movie culture and deserves the title, the Biggest Little City in the World.