The other evening I caught the last 10 minutes of Tommy showing late night on TV. I’ve seen it various times when I was younger, but not since I’ve been quite so “attuned” to my environment courtesy of my exploring. Hence, the thing I immediately noticed was that Tommy’s holiday camp was at one of the Portsdown forts, and a quick Google turned up this interesting site. As it turns out the vast majority of the film was shot around Pompey!
So interesting fact #1 - I was right, and it was Fort Purbrook.
Interesting fact #2 - at the end of the film there is a short bit of footage of a pier really on fire. I’d assumed it was some stock footage of perhaps one of the Brighton piers. However it was in fact South Parade Pier in Southsea! It turns out the the pier that we’ve regularly walked down is very different now to how it used to be courtesy of a couple of fires around the era of Tommy. The first destroyed the theatre, and the second was actually the result of an accident whilst filming Tommy which did for the rest of the pier. So the footage is real, and the pier now is a much less grand version rebuilt after the Tommy accident.
And interesting fact #3 - the end of the film with lots of large silver balls was filmed at the (infamous) Pounds Scrapyard. Ironically I was talking about Pounds just last night. Over the years the amount of cool things you could see at Pounds as you head across the M275 into Pompey have reduced, but it’s still an interesting target for exploration. However, the owners have a reputation for not “welcoming” visitors, though activity on the site has now greatly reduced ahead of (very lucrative) redevelopment.
Anyhow, time for me to get a copy of Tommy, and watch it with renewed interest!