Detroit Rock City


Film Clip Available

1978: Bell-bottoms, day-glo. lava lamps and rock-n-roll define a generation. What's a high school rock band from Cleveland got on their mind? Getting out and hitting the road to "Detroit Rock City". Four teens head out to pay their respects to the kings of rock, KISS. Part road trip, part coming-of-age comedy, part crazy ride through the 70's, this movie rocks and rolls all the way through.

Set in 1978 Cleveland and Detroit, the film was actually shot in Toronto (budget benefits) although the city doubled well as Detroit, particularly with its scale and the tram tracks etc. Some 2nd unit work was shot in Detroit to establish some of the historical landmarks of the town. Not the most aesthetically pleasing period in our history, and not that long ago, but still demands the peculiarities of doing any period film. A lot of 60's and 70's cars for the streets, and a lot of product research and clearances! Much of the Kiss memorabilia came from Gene Simmons personal collection, as well as e-bay, and fans.

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Director:

Steve Hardie
Cal Louks
Vic Rigler
Kirk Cheney
John R.Leonetti
J.Peter Robinson/KISS
Rosanna Norton
Pete Schink/Mark Goldblatt
Valerie McCaffrey
Carl V. DuPre

GeneSimmons/B.Levine/K.Hasse
Adam Rifkin
 
   
  Sketch of the boys' basement hangout, a studio set stuffed with KISS stuff. All of the sets were built and dressed for the beginning of principal photography as cover for bad weather. They stood idle for the whole time we were on location as we never had bad weather.   Photo of finished set.  
         
   Jam's room, another studio set. Designed to be a bedroom that hadn't changed too much from when Jam was a child, part of the character of how his mother still sees him. To test different wallpaper designs for the room, I scanned samples and pasted them into the illustration for Director approval.    In the photo of the set, it also shows how the room was set up to visually accommodate the stunt work. While we ended up changing the wallpaper to a different design, you can still see an element of the original idea on the wall behind the bed-head.  
         

Above is one of the key props in the film - "The Ticket". The object of their obsession. They were based on tickets of that period, researched from the "Kisstory" book which proved to be an invaluable reference for many of the Kiss details.

On the far right is a foreground miniature billboard pictured against a car for scale. This was used at the side of the road as their car passed by and a whip pan to this sign photographed from the right low angle, gives the illusion of it being a full size billboard.
   
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