Columbia University in Films and Television

This is a partially sorted list of Columbia University's representation in various films and television programs.

Films

Movies making reference to Columbia and/or featuring scenes shot on the Morningside campus include:

Scarlett Johansson at Columbia University during the shooting of The Nanny Diaries.

One of the fountains at Columbia University

• 3 lb
• A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy
• Across the Universe
• Altered States
• Anger Management
• August Rush
• Awakenings
• Black and White
• Crimes and Misdemeanors
• Cruising
• The Detective
• Enchanted
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
• Everyone Says I Love You
• Finding Forrester
• Ghostbusters
• Ghostbusters II
• Hannah and Her Sisters
• Hitch
• Husbands and Wives
• Igby Goes Down'
• K-PAX
• In the Blood
• Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
• Kinsey
• Made of Honor
• Malcolm X
• Manhattan
• Marathon Man
• The Mirror Has Two Faces
• Mona Lisa Smile
• The Nanny Diaries
• New York Minute
• North
• Porn 'n Chicken
• Premium Rush
• The Princess Diaries
• The Pride of the Yankees
• The Producers: The Movie Musical
• P.S.
• Quiz Show
• Real Women Have Curves
• The Rock (film)
• Simon
• The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
• Spider-Man
• Spider-Man 2
• Stay
• Tadpole
• Ta Ra Rum Pum
• Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
• West Side Story

Television

• 7th Heaven - Matt and Sarah (Glass) Camden were students here until they graduated just after the 10th season finale.
• Clark and Michael - In the last episode of the Internet TV show, Clark Duke is accepted to Columbia University but chooses not to go after his and Michael Cera's fictional TV show, "The Family Cruise", is picked up by CBS.
• Community - Jeff Winger attends Greendale Community College after the Colorado Bar Association discovers that his bachelor's degree from Columbia was forged.
• Gossip Girl - In the third season, Blair Waldorf and Serena Van der Woodsen enroll at Columbia University.
• Growing Pains - Carol Seaver attends Columbia.
• House - Doctors Eric Foreman and James Wilson (House) attended medical school at Columbia, while Doctor Martha Masters received her undergraduate degree there.
• How I Met Your Mother - Marshall Eriksen is a law student at Columbia. Ted Mosby becomes a professor of Architecture in the end of the fourth season.
• Law & Order - prosecutor Jamie Ross (later a judge on Law & Order: Trial by Jury) attended Columbia Law.
• Lost - Both Matthew Fox and his character, Dr. Jack Shephard, are Columbia alumni.
• Modern Family - Mitchell Pritchett attended Cornell undergrad and Columbia Law.
• Nip/Tuck - Dr. Erica Noughton, the mother of Julia McNamara, is a Columbia alumna with a Ph.D in clinical psychology.
• Northern Exposure - Dr. Joel Fleishman (Rob Morrow) is a graduate of Columbia.
• Saved by the Bell - Jessie Spano attends Columbia.
• The Sopranos - Meadow Soprano, the daughter of Tony Soprano, is an undergraduate Columbia student.
• The West Wing - Toby Zeigler, former White House Director of Communication, takes a faculty position at Columbia some time after being dismissed by President Jed Bartlett for leaking classified information.
• What I Like About You - Valerie Tyler is an alumna of Columbia, and her sister, Holly, applies to Columbia as well.
• Will & Grace - Will Truman and Grace Adler met in college at Columbia.

Music

• Recording artist Nellie McKay has released a song on her second album Pretty Little Head, entitled "Columbia Is Bleeding", alleging animal abuse as part of the practice of animal testing at Columbia University.

Fictitious Columbians

In Spider-Man films directed by Sam Raimi, Peter Parker attains his powers after being bitten by a radioactive spider at a laboratory at Columbia University (the lab scenes were actually filmed at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles), and later attends the school. The Marvel Comics superhero Daredevil was valedictorian of his class at Columbia Law School.^[1] Willie Keith, the protagonist in Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny, is a Columbia student when he signs up for the Navy at the beginning of World War II; Wouk specifically refers to the campus, including buildings such as Furnald Hall. Law & Order prosecutor Jamie Ross (later a judge on Law & Order: Trial by Jury) attended Columbia Law. Meadow Soprano, of the television series The Sopranos, attends Columbia.^[2] Michael Moscovitz, a character in the The Princess Diaries series by Meg Cabot, also attends Columbia University. On the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, both main characters, Will Truman and Grace Adler, played by Eric McCormack and Debra Messing, respectively, were Columbia graduates. Jack Shephard (Matthew Fox) from ABC's Lost graduated from Columbia University Medical Center. Jessie Spano from Saved by the Bell attended Columbia University in the show's spin-off. Jessica Darling, the protagonist of Megan McCafferty's Sloppy Firsts, Second Helpings, and Charmed Thirds, attends Columbia. Dr. Joel Fleishman (Rob Morrow) on the television series Northern Exposure was a graduate of Columbia. Valerie Tyler in the TV show What I Like About You is a Columbia graduate, with a degree in Public Relations. Carol Seaver from the family sitcom Growing Pains (Tracey Gold) also attended the university. In How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Andie Anderson (Kate Hudson) graduated from Columbia Journalism. In the film I Think I Love My Wife, Richard Cooper (Chris Rock) held an M.B.A. degree from Columbia (An M.B.A. diploma from Columbia can be seen hanging on the wall in the character's office). Marshall Eriksen of How I Met Your Mother is a Columbia Law school graduate. Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage) in the movie "The Rock" holds a BA from Columbia. In addition, the television comedy series (Seinfeld) was fictionally filmed near the Columbia campus, as the famous Seinfeld diner "Monk's" is in fact Tom's Restaurant on Broadway at 112th Street. Similarly, the pop song (Tom's Diner) by Barnard alum (Suzanne Vega) is also set in Tom's Restaurant. In Siri Hustvedt's 2008 novel, The Blindfold, the heroine is a grad student at Columbia. Mara Waters, a character in The Au Pairs, a novel by Melissa de la Cruz, decides to attend Columbia rather than Dartmouth. In Richard Powers' novel, The Time of our Singing, the family's father, David Strom, is a physicist at Columbia. As for the boys, they both attend Juilliard School. Both Doctor Eric Foreman and James Wilson (House) on the popular Fox medical drama House attended the medical school at Columbia. Professor X, of X-Men fame, completed his graduate studies at Columbia, where he received his PhD in Anthropology. In the film Panic Room, the character which Jodie Foster plays is a Columbia University student. Aqua in Cheetah Girls 3 wanted to be a prospective Columbian and she makes references to their excellent physics departments.^[3] In the Bollywood movie, Ta Ra Rum Pum, Radhika Rani Mukerji is majoring in music at Columbia University when she meets Rajveer Singh Saif Ali Khan.

References

1. ^ "Daredevil". www.comicoo.com. http://www.comicoo.com/daredevil_v2/index.htm. Retrieved 2008-02-26. 
2. ^ "Meadow Soprano, played by Jamie-Lynn Sigler". The Sopranos. HBO. http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/cast/character/meadow_soprano.shtml. Retrieved 2006-08-10. 
3. ^ Professor X's Biography at Marvel website