The movie “Queenpins,” directed by husband-wife team Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, follows two ladies as they launch a multi-million dollar coupon counterfeiting scheme. Debt and disappointment are Connie and Jojo’s problems, and it appears like the system is against them.
Connie is willing to break the law to take a shortcut to prosperity. She works out the production logistics for the coupons, which are all produced in the same location. Travelling there, Connie and Jojo pick up any unused coupons to sell on their website before suspicious activity freezes their bank accounts.
They made contact with a hacker who had previously targeted Jojo, put up a genuine proof of business, and started reinvesting their stolen funds to make unbelievable gains. However, a strict loss prevention officer has discovered their whereabouts and can organize the FBI to disrupt their business.
The 2021 movie features likeable characters and a humorous tale based on events. We follow the main characters as they work from their Phoenix suburban homes, eventually acquiring warehouses and private aircraft for their travels. The majority of “Queenpins” was filmed in and around Los Angeles, California.
We saw establishing shots of Montenegro, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Mexico, and Washington while the film was being produced in a studio. During the COVID-19 epidemic, principal photography began on October 22, 2020, and concluded on December 7, 2020. Let us guide you through the locations and shooting places that went into making the film.
Queenpins Filming Locations
Los Angeles, California
In “Queenpins,” many locations throughout Los Angeles County served as stand-ins for Phoenix and its neighbourhoods. The city of Pomona emerged as one of the primary shooting locations for the crime comedy, situated in the Pomona Valley, sandwiched between the Inland Empire and the San Gabriel Valley.
Connie and Jojo lived in the Phoenix neighbourhood, which was transformed from a suburban area within the city. “Certainly a lot of compromises we had to make because just the reality of, you know, we couldn’t just go shoot wherever we wanted 22 of our 30 shoot days. We are all on this one, like a mental healthcare campus that has been close down in Pomona,” co-director Aron said, discussing how difficult it was to film during the pandemic.
“We had to make it work,” said Aron. We had to explore every crevice on that campus to see how we might use it as a setting for our film. Some scenes, such as the courthouse in the movie, were created at a Los Angeles studio.
Located at 3061 Treadwell Street, Riverfront Stages is well-known for its standing stages, which include townhouses, apartments, courthouses, jail complexes, modern offices, bar stages, morgues, and townhouses. The Stage 1 building of Riverfront Stages was used for the production of the courtroom sequence in “Queenpins.”
Santa Paula, California
With its desert terrain and small-town charm, Santa Paula was chosen by the filmmakers to represent Chihuahua, Mexico, the location of Connie and Jojo’s trip to the coupon printing facility, right in the middle of Ventura County.
Santa Paula was the backdrop for the entire scene as they staked out the facility and persuaded Alejandro to join them. Filmmakers will find the city’s well-preserved downtown, dotted with historic businesses and notable structures, to be a timeless backdrop that can be easily adapted to fit a variety of genres.
The adaptable background of Santa Paula has been used in several movies, including “Joe Dirt,” “Carrie,” “Chaplin,” “The Heartbreak Kid,” and “Bedtime Stories.”
Other Filming Locations
One can see a variety of actual cities, towns, and locations in the film’s numerous establishing shots. Each time the movie moves to a new location, a dramatic landscape view of the real location is shown, with text that introduces the scene appearing in the foreground.
The movie opens with a view of Phoenix, Arizona since the real-life story took place there. Salt Lake City, Utah, and Carson City, Nevada, are also highlighted similarly. The movie shows us a view of the real FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. as they learn about the counterfeiting scheme.
An establishing picture from Connie and Jojo’s trip to Mexico to inspect the coupon-making factory shows a quick glimpse of a town in Chihuahua. When Jojo moves to Montenegro at the end of the film to launch a new company, a view of Kotor, a tropical paradise, is displayed.
