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Stuart Neumann, asserted to the author that Capitol Hill was the most difficult film location in the world. 5 Complicating the filming of the Capitol, especially its interiors, is the big bugaboo of this century: security. us, in Billy Jack's wake, the large area around the Capitol, called the Capitol grounds, became effectively off-limits. e trauma of 9/11 certainly contributed to additional security concerns at the site, but it was the dramatic attack within the Capitol itself in July 1998 (when two Capitol Police officers were killed by a deranged gunman) that was the first major impetus for limiting access to the building. Permission for filming the Capitol has been restricted over the last 40 years to 2nd Street on the east (crossing East Capitol Street), to First Street on the west (running by the Grant Memorial), down south to C Street, SE, and up north to the Union Station Plaza. Examples of how filmmakers must cope with these restrictions on either side of the structure can be seen in films like Suspect (1987), e Distinguished Gentleman (1992), Random Hearts (1999), e Sentinel (2006), Casino Jack (2010), Fair Game (2010), White House Down (2013), and the recent e Post (2017), where a shot of bound newspa- pers being tossed from a truck onto East Capitol Street can go no closer than the 200 block. e point is always to get the "money shot" of the Dome. e limitations cited above mean that filmmak- ers who want the Capitol in the background oen set- tle for shooting at the Grant Memorial directly west of the Capitol. is site is the dividing line between what constitutes the Capitol grounds and the National Park Service's territory, allowing an unfettered, if distant, vision of the Dome. is limitation could give audiences the impression that the memorial is one of the most important sites to discuss serious political matters. In reality, however, almost no one doing business at the Capitol would walk there; the grand statue is mainly a tourist attraction from which to watch birds in the reflecting pool or for groups to pose together on the steps for photo remembrances. Exceptions to these limitations on the use of the Capitol grounds have been rare. In the 1978 film F.I.S.T., starring Sylvester Stallone as a Hoffa-like Teamsters' union boss, there is a scene of a truckers' protest near the Capitol in the 1950s. 6 e production was able to create a mass mobilization of vehicles just north and west of the Capitol. e makers of e Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979) were also allowed to show a touring school bus turning off First Street, NE to enter the Capitol grounds (a shot that would be prohibited today). Another significant exception was granted in 1993, when Robert Redford's production of the drama Quiz Show (1994) was allowed to shoot on the steps of the House side of the Capitol, an exception specifically made for Redford aer he came to Washington to make an in-person appeal to then-Speaker Tom Foley. 7 ere have been no up-close Capitol shots since; every image of the icon is now from about three blocks away. II. REIMAGINING THE CAPITOL Even given the security obstacles and other restrictions, filmmakers who aim to tell Washington stories will always try ways to incorporate the Capitol. e first major studio picture to fully feature Washington, D.C., Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, was also the first to create a Capitol vision of its own. e film's director, Frank Capra, had planned some key sequences to take place on the floor of the Senate (including Jimmy Stewart's dramatic closing filibuster) and very much wanted to shoot there. Yet congressional rules then (and now) would not allow him to shoot inside the chamber, so Columbia Pictures spent $100,000 to have a crack design team of 125 men recreate a dupli- cate chamber in Hollywood over several weeks. In his biography, e Name Above the Title, Capra extols his art director, Leslie Banks, and his team: From ancient blueprints dug out of the Cap- itol's catacombs, and thousands of photo- graphs, (Bank's) department of magicians was asked to conjure up, in one hundred days, exact replicas of what had taken one hundred years to build. In reconstructing the Senate chamber, seen by countless eyes and hallowed by a thousand traditions, even the omission of historic scratches on a desk might betray the imitation. 8 is splendid, to-scale replica (fig. 5), which one magazine called "complete to the last acanthus leaf and arabesque," is one of the finest sets Hollywood ever produced. 9 When Smith wanders into it for the first time with awe on his face, his impression was certainly matched by the mil- lions of American filmgoers who had never ventured to Washington and had never seen the chamber. Much of the authentic Washington flavor of Mr. Smith was aided by Capra's technical advisor on the film, James Preston, THE CAPITOL DOME 6