MARTA has played a bit part in a few films over the years, whether Atlanta is a cheap location for a film set in some other city or explicitly acknowledged. There’s the very memorable hijacking of a MARTA bus at the beginning of Burt Reynolds’ Sharky’s Machine (1978), memorable mainly in the sense that everything that happens after this point is excruciatingly unmemorable. 
Kim Bassinger takes it in The Real McCoy (1993) after she’s just been released from jail where she was doing time for a botched bank robbery, now on MARTA and on her way to new life, a fresh start. We’ve all been there before.
MARTA is hilariously rebranded as “NARTA” in Livin’ Large! (1991). Livin’ Large was shot all over the city, so if you’re really into that, be our guest.
The most felicitous use of MARTA, however, is in the truly terrible 1985 movie you’ve never heard of, The Heavenly Kid. 
In “the early ’60s” a bunch of 1950s greaser “teens” play a deadly game of chicken and Bobby ends up running his car off a cliff. Suddenly we’re hurdling through a tunnel…
…and Bobby is on a train with a bunch of freaks. Where am I? Who are these people? Does this train end at Doraville or North Springs? etc. 
This line actually ends at PEACHTREE CENTER STATION.
Of course if you are going to do a movie where a bunch of dead people are ascending to heaven, you have them end up in this otherworldly station.
PERFECT.
(Do not bother with the rest of the movie. Trust us.)
Previously: The gay ’90s
Filed under: film
