For movie buffs, you may be surprised to know that Los Angeles’ Terminal Island Freeway is used quite often for freeway or highway related scenes set in locations nowhere near Southern California. The reasons being is because of its general location from movie studios, so its easy to get to; relatively light traffic, so its easy to close for filming; and an urban/industrial landscape, so it can simulate many different settings.

In the most recent episode of the hit NBC series Heroes, a freeway scene was shot where the character “Nathan Petrelli” and his wife are driving in a convertible at night. First Petrelli and his wife are talking when a black SUV approaches from behind. As the camera angles shift, a large lift-bridge appears in the background. The next scene sees the two get rear-ended by the SUV, with Petrelli ascending unexpectedly to safety. Following that dramatic event, the convertible caroms into a freeway off-ramp gore point, with his wife still in the car. The camera pans outward revealing a button copy overhead with “New Dock Street” on it. Heroes moves on to a hospital scene next…

This was the gore point hit by Nathan Petrelli’s convertible in Heroes.

The “New York City” freeway in question from Heroes was actually that of the Terminal Island Freeway, otherwise numbered California 47. Tell tale signs of the Terminal Island Freeway in movies start with the Shulyer F. Heim Bridge. The Helm Bridge is a lift bridge with steel superstructure that spans the harbor between Terminal Island and the city of Los Angeles. Its dark steel is similar to Interstate 280 in Newark, New Jersey, and just a handful of other freeway bridges throughout the country. So that’s giveaway number one.

Giveaway number 2 is the industrial background that seems to repeat with each scene. That is because the freeway is just 3.7 miles in length between the south end at Ocean Boulevard and the north end at Willow Street. There are only so many segments of Terminal Island Freeway between exits that can be filmed without catching glimpses of the freeway guide signs.

In movies and TV, signs are almost rarely shown to add to the illusion of location. So you just have to recognize buildings, landscapes, bridges, interchanges, etc to truly recognize an area. That is how you go about recognizing the Terminal Island Freeway in film, such as Being John Malkovich. In that 1999-film, the the New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 95 signs props used in the movie were posted ahead of the Helm Bridge. However during Heroes, the recognition was made easier by panning far enough out to show the New Dock Street exit sign and off-ramp, which L.A. freeway experts knows is the last exit of the Terminal Island Freeway southbound before it ends at Ocean Boulevard.

A story for another time is California 47’s Vincent Thomas Bridge, a suspension bridge made equally famous from films. That bridge connects Terminal Island with the 110 at San Pedro…