(National Post, 7 Sep 2002)
by Liz Clayton
Suspension of disbelief is hard for movie-going Torontonians. It's simply impossible to get caught up in the proverbial moment when you're stifling the urge to "announce loudly to everyone around me that 'that's where I take my dry cleaning!'"
So, just as I'd finally gotten to the point where I could walk past Roy Thomson Hall without imagining the X-Men conjuring plots inside, in waltzes box-office runaway My Big Fat Greek Wedding. The romantic comedy is set in a thinly veiled attempt at Chicago — making an especially perplexing movie-going experience for me, a Chicago native busy trying to spot familiar sights from both past and present hometowns.
The film's many shots of Toronto's Greektown include glimpses of real Greek stores with real Greeks inside and out front. Louis Caragiannis of Louis Meat Market says he's gained a little because both he and his store appear in the film.
He also happens to be the owner of the building that played temporary home to Mount Olympus Travel, the travel agency at which Nia Vardalos' autobiographical heroine, Toula, takes a job.
These days Mount Olympus Travel would be hard to recognize if you weren't looking carefully. It's currently home to an adult novelty store called Party For Two. (The store bills itself as "Toronto's premiere couples store," suggesting that the contents inside will be kinky, but not too kinky.)
Party for Two employee Corey Harvey says not too many people have come into the store having recognized it from the movie, perhaps because of the risque nature of the merchandise.
"Some people just come in and they don't shop. They ask, and then they leave," says Harvey.
Directly across the street is Pappas Grill, which makes numerous appearances in the film (eliciting audience murmurs of "Pappas Grill!" each time it's seen through the windows of the travel agency.) The management there has been quick to capitalize on the restaurant's fifteen minutes by placing a sandwich board outside its door advertising "as featured in My Big Fat Greek Wedding" atop a poster for the film.
Pappas Grill seating host Jason Ramcharan said the boost in recognition from the film was noticeable. "After Taste of the Danforth we were expecting a bit of a letdown, but we haven't had one."
Ellas Restaurant, on Pape just north of Danforth, makes an appearance as "Aphrodite's Palace", the audaciously Greek banquet hall where Toula and Ian (played by John Corbett) hold their wedding reception. And yes, according to cook Dino Kiriopoulos, Greek wedding receptions are really like that.
Dancing Zorba's, the family-owned restaurant around which much of My Big Fat Greek Wedding is centred, is merely a studio creation, though the exterior shots of the Portokalos family home are of a genuine Toronto residence. The home, near St. Clair and O'Connor, is the genuine article, although some embellishments (like the garage painted like a Greek flag) were added.
Across town at Ryerson University, several students at the Rogers Communications Centre weren't at all aware of their school's facade being passed off as Chicago's "Harry S Truman College", though if you look you can easily see a Dominion grocery store in the background! (In another shot inside the same building, the word "Ryerson" is plainly clear on a flyer stuck to a bulletin board.)
Ryerson student Gabriela Buczek recognized her academic haunts in the film. Buczek was proud to see her school on the big screen, but lamented Hollywood's need to throw an American flag up in movies filmed in Canada. "It's just a story about a Greek family, so why can't they say that it's a Greek family in Canada?"
Ryerson also masqueraded as the inside of Lincoln Park High School, where the character of Ian teaches in the movie. The exterior of the school, incidentally, is nearby Jarvis Collegiate Institute.
And then there are the romantic locations. You don't have to go all the way to Chicago for a romantic post-date stroll across a light-festooned pedestrian bridge — that bridge is right here along the harbourfront (though it currently has a large banner advertising beer hanging from it.)
Unfortunately a couple's nice view of the Crowne Plaza Hotel and (former) Canada Trust Tower is now obstructed by yet more partially completed waterfront condos.
The movie's climax, the titular wedding, takes place in downtown Toronto, too, though it's nowhere near Greektown. The "Greek Orthodox Church" Toula and Ian marry in is actually on trendy Queen West — it's Saint Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church, just east of Trinity Bellwoods Park.
The 97-year-old church has seen many changes in its years, but perhaps few so dramatic as masquerading as a different religion altogether.
And so another city is blended into ours, creating a boisterous, fantastic, Greek suburban Chicago that never was. It's a little bit sad to not get to show our city off to the world for what it really is, but hey — at least this time it wasn’t New York.