BOOKS:
FILM:
In 1999
Harrisburg State Hospital was used
for the hospital setting in the
film,
Girl, Interrupted.
The movie starred quite a few well
known actors, including Whoopi
Goldberg, Winona Ryder,
Angelina Jolie, and
Kurtwood Smith. Harrisburg
State Hospital settings were meant
to resemble those of the grounds of
McLean Hospital in
Massachusetts. The majority of the
scenes were shot in
Building #22 and the
Administration Building. During
the time that the movie was being
filmed, the hospital was still very
much an active state hospital,
though it's patient population was
much lower than in previous years.
The following is from the press
release information about the making
of the 1999 Winona Ryder film "Girl
Interrupted".
Although it is still a
fully-operational mental facility
with inpatient and outpatient
programs covering a wide variety of
illnesses and treatments, there were
several buildings on the "campus"
which were empty and not being used
by the facility, perfect
accommodations for the film
company's production offices,
transportation base camp and
screening room (in what use to be
the hospital chapel). In the case of
Building 22, there was a unique
opportunity to create the entire
South Bell ward of Claymoore
Hospital.
Production designer Richard Hoover
(a 1999 Tony Award winner for "Not
About Nightingales") and his staff
of art directors, designers, set
dressers and construction crews
renovated 75 percent of Building 22.
They created an entire ward of
bedrooms, nurses' stations, a living
room, a television room and several
medical rooms out of the
architectural shell of the building.
Inside, they dressed and decorated
the ward with everything circa late
1960s: light fixtures, furniture,
even the color of paints used on the
walls and ceilings.
The production design team also
"decorated" many other areas of the
State Hospital campus, including
offices in the administration
building and several hundred yards
of the miles of underground tunnels
that snake their way underneath the
campus. Additionally, the design
team landscaped much of the hospital
grounds, according to the seasonal
changes dictated within the script.
"The Harrisburg State Hospital is
known as `The City on the Hill,'"
says Konrad. "For our time there, we
lovingly referred to it as our `back
lot on the Hill.' It became a
revolving sound stage for us, where
we were able to build the sets to
our specifications and use them as
weather cover when necessary. We had
incredible freedom in filming on the
grounds. The landscape and brick
architecture mirrored the backdrop
of the story better than we could
have ever imagined. It was a
tremendous asset to the making of
this film."
In 2008
Harrisburg State Hospital will once
again be used as the setting for
another movie called
Another Harvest Moon. The movie
is scheduled to be in production by
June 2008. The only information
available about the story so far is
that it is set in a retirement home.
Where the main character has
survived a stroke and is reconciling
living in a new way than he's
accustomed to living.
