Sean and the gang started filming Connery’s latest epic, “Finding Forrester” in Toronto, Canada and around Ontario for the entire month of April 2000. They then headed to New York City between Wednesday, May 3 and Saturday, June 10. (The “Con-Man” only had a total of eight to ten days’ work on New York sets.) We had a peek at the new script draft to help us find “King Connery”.

The majority of Connery’s scenes were lensed inside NY’s Evangelical Seminary on 10th Avenue at West 21st Street in Manhattan. They crew worked briefly on Saturday, May 6 (Matt Sherman’s birthday!) at East 52nd Street on the famous and well-traveled Park Avenue. Later, everyone moved up the avenue for the remainder of the day at the corner of East 68th and Park where the Americas Society’s building doubles as a private school.

Plans to return the following day to the same location shot were cancelled, and a bit more than a day later, the Finding Forrester crew with Connery appeared at Lexington Avenue just south of East 86th Street. Connery’s powerful visage was seen strolling this expanse with multiple reflections of him appearing on shop windows all over the street! He also did night shooting at the subway steps of Jerome Avenue at the 161st Street and 168th Street entrances (way uptown in The Bronx!) and at Yankee Stadium’s garage plus inside a desolate Yankee Stadium on the field without any crowds present. (You don’t want to visit Yankee Stadium to see Connery’s film location, fans, without armed escort unless there is a Yankee game in town at that time with crowds of people present!)

One summer evening, nearby the stadium at 229 East 158th Street, at the playground across the street on Park Avenue in The Bronx, Connery’s double was spotted prepping for daytime shooting. Meanwhile, “Mr. C.” enjoyed his favorite sport of golf at the Deepdale Golf Club in Nassau County, Long Island, just off the Queens, NYC border, and stayed in a rented house nearby in the Great Neck area (home of the Great Gatsby and one-time residence of my grandparents–Matt).

Bond version 1.0 also checked on his son, Neil Connery, who lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan near Hunter College (address withheld by request for security reasons). Though few outdoor scenes were done on location on New York streets where the fans could watch the goings-on, much of Finding Forrester was filmed in New York inside many different public school classrooms across Manhattan and The Bronx. Greenwich Village’s private and hoity-toity “The New School” was also a rumored location. (It was hard to follow this crew, they moved so fast! The Mayor’s film bureau kept them moving because press and the public jammed traffic on the New York streets!)

“Forrester” was the senior Connery’s first film shoot in New York since November ‘88 when he visited The Big Apple for his “Family Business” with fellow Oscar-winner Dustin Hoffman and Matthew Broderick. Connery gave “the Business” during outdoor shooting in Jericho, Queens; Long Island and Jersey City, New Jersey. We recommend a lovely site, Sean Connery To The Stars which features possible future projects of his; the latest, which he hasn’t signed onto, is called “End Game”. Also keep watch here at 007Forever for the latest Bond and Connery happenings.