John Wick: The Calvary Cemetery Scene

A recent series of bizarre-to-me coincidences involving Calvary Cemetery caused me to revisit that boneyard’s appearances in movies and television. Not so long ago the cemetery had strict rules forbidding video being shot on the grounds. If Calvary’s appearance in TV and movies from recent years is any indication then either those rules have been relaxed or else film crews are just barging in and setting up shop guerrilla-style, without permission

One recent notable appearances of Calvary include the film John Wick, starring Keanu Reeves. The film includes a brief scene which several online sources say was filmed at Calvary. Indeed, part of it was, but I think another cemetery was also used as a filming location for that scene. I am just not sure which one.

I do not know where this is but I would bet you a beer that it is not Calvary Cemetery in Queens. No part of Calvary looks anything like this, specifically as regards the density of trees. There are plenty of trees at Calvary but nowhere are they so thick that you cannot see the horizon. Additionally the layout of the tombstones is not consistent with the cemetery’s general practice of arranging markers in straight lines.

I also notice that the umbrella Keanu Reeves is holding in this shot appears to be quite a bit smaller than the satellite-dish-sized monstrosity he holds in the following shots. This further supports my belief that the scene was filmed not just in two different cemeteries but maybe even on two different days.

Based primarily on the density of trees I would guess this is Green-Wood in Brooklyn, or maybe Mt. Olivet in Middle Village. My guess is that they wanted to film this scene at a cemetery with sweeping views of Manhattan (Green-Wood fits that bill) but they were not happy with the shot they got there and filmed the scene over again at Calvary. I am happy to be wrong if anyone reading this can prove otherwise, but whichever cemetery that is in the first picture is I do not think it is Calvary.

This, on the other hand, is definitely good old Calvary Cemetery. The camera which filmed this shot was at Section 47, Row 99. It stood directly behind a “GARRAHY” marker which occupies graves 13 through 16. My shot does not quite replicate the one from the film, as I did not get most of the marker at the far right, but this is obviously the same spot with the distinctively lurching tree branches.

The only legible tombstone from John Wick is seen in this shot, between Willem Dafoe and Keanu Reeves. Produced by the Fasolino Monuments company the marker is in memory of the Minore family: Gaspare Minore: 1876-1958; Giocchina Minore, 1886-1967; Nunzio Minore, 1911-1936; and Anthony Minore, 1915-1981.

Records from the 1910 census show that Gaspare Minore was a laborer who worked in the shoveling industry. He lived with his wife and two children at 404 East 63rd Street in Manhattan. Nunzio and Anthony, presumably the sons whose names are also on the tombstone, were born after the 1910 census, and I find no information on them. One of the two daughters, Mamie, appears not to have lived long.

Ancestry.com has quite a bit of public information on the Minore family — so much, in fact, that I will temper my innate desire to recreate the story of the Minore family. I should take it for granted by now but it never ceases to amaze me that I can go to a cemetery, collect a bunch of names and dates, and more than ½ the time I look them up on the Internet I will find some information about who those people were and what they did with their time above ground. It’s an ease-of-access scenario unimaginable to generations of people buried here and elsewhere.

I did not attempt to recreate these close-up shots of Dafoe and Reeves but if it is your thing to do you can recreate this scene by looking for the Minore marker at Section 48, Row 199, graves 9 & 10 and figuring out from there where the two men stood.

I am going to attempt to re-create the next shot again next time I go out to Calvary. I didn’t quite get it. I don’t understand how the Empire State Building juts out from behind the tree in the film but not for me. I think I was standing on the exact same spot as the film’s camera person.

Finding these exact spots where scenes have been filmed at Calvary is never as easy as I think it’s going to be. When hunting for the exact burial spot of Vito Corleone in The Godfather I had to go back 3 or 4 times in search of the elusive Daly marker, which proved to be as puzzling a clue as it was important in determining exactly where the scene was filmed. Finding the John Wick location was considerably easier, though I did waste some time trying to find the location used at the start of this scene. From the moment I saw that image I did not think it was in Calvary. I looked for it anyway because I didn’t think it made sense for the filmmakers to film such a short scene at two different cemeteries.