Oscar Watch: Grand Budapest

The Grand Budapest Hotel wasn’t always that way – grand, that is. According to Peter McPartlin, whose Paintbrush production company produced the Oscar nominated film, it was actually shot in a vacant, run-down department store ……. Görlitzer Warenhaus department store to be exact …… and in Germany, far more than a stone’s throw from Budapest …… 903.5 km to be exact.

“The first thing that really comes up in filmmaking is you have to decide where you want to shoot the movie and a lot of that is driven by tax incentives,” McPartlin told us. “For Grand Budapest, it was Germany. Wes Anderson (director) found this fantastic department store and of course has to have it, has to have it!! You look at the picture and you know it’s a Wes Anderson movie. Come to find out, the department store was in bankruptcy. The first idea from Wes of course was ‘just buy it’ and then sell it. I didn’t think we wanted to be in the real estate business with Görlitzer. This actual department store, just by Wes going the extra mile, ended up being a huge blessing and it was really cool.”