Admit it. Last time you drove by DAR Constitution Hall, you thought to yourself, “Gee, I wonder if those elegant windows ever appeared in a TV show.” No? Well, I bet you’ve strolled around the Capitol Reflecting Pool and pretended you were — wait, what’s that actor’s name? Anyway, you pretended you were that guy, whispering away government secrets. And if not that, then at least you’re dying for an exhaustive list of every film in which the White House is incinerated, crashed into, or otherwise defiled.

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Yeah, me neither. But apparently there’s a big enough market for such trivia to justify the expansion of On Location Tours to our intermittently cinematic city. In New York, where it’s based, the company not only runs a citywide bus tour of locations seen in famous — and not-so-famous — movies and TV shows, but several dedicated specifically to The Sopranos, Gossip Girl, and Sex and the City. (The must-see sights on those three tours, respectively: Bada Bing!, Chuck’s limo, and Samantha’s vagina.) But the D.C. tour takes you to pretty much the same places as do the other countless tours that depart from Union Station.

That’s because most Hollywood productions come here to shoot the sights for which the city is already famous — that is, the tourist attractions. So the challenge facing On Location Tours means that after departing Union Station — where a bomb was hidden in the planters in Collateral Damage, and where Julianne Moore, as Clarice in Hannibal, circles a carousel while chatting on her celly with the titular serial killer, and where a flower market was installed for Wedding Crashers, and I could go on — the minibus drove past typical sights like the Capitol (the most-filmed site in D.C.), National Archives, Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial.

The narrative journey, of course, is decidedly different. The National Archives isn’t where you can find, say, the canceled check from the purchase of Alaska; rather, it’s the building from which Nicolas Cage stole the Declaration of Independence (for sexual gain). Upon its completion in 1884, the Washington Monument might have been the tallest building in the world, but it’s also the phallic punch line in the closing shot of Wedding Crashers. And the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, is notable as the very spot where a mentally handicapped Vietnam vet and an anti-war floozy share a sopping hug in Forrest Gump.

But now I’m just being a spoilsport. While spending $40 to ride a bus around the city for nearly four hours — and on a rare balmy Saturday, no less — isn’t my idea of a day well-spent, I must admit that this was among the less painful bus tours I’ve ever taken. Much of the credit goes to our young guide, Brian Sutow, who, in honor of his final day on the job, was rewarded with: a microphone that went dead within a half hour; a capricious DVD player (two small screens show film clips during the tour); a know-it-all movie buff from Australia who frequently challenged the veracity, and breadth, of Sutow’s trivia; and finally three off-duty tour guides (from other companies), one of whom corrected Sutow’s non-cinematic facts with the ruthlessness of a spelling bee judge.

Sutow was unflappable. Dressed in cargo shorts, cross trainers, a blue “On Locations” ringer tee and a flat cap, the 24-year-old actor was humorous without hamming it up and informative without insulting us. In short, he was the ideal guide, and I’m not surprised that he landed a role on a national tour of Knuffle Bunny, a musical geared toward the only audience more difficult than tourists: children.

Of the 20 people on the tour, at most three of them, me included, seemed to be in possession of anything resembling movie knowledge. (And even still, when the guide alluded to The Contender, and then asked for the other film in which a Jeff Bridges character loves to bowl, I waited a full five beats before answering, for mercy’s sake, The Big Lebowski.) A quarter of us were from the D.C. area, including a mustached man from Centreville who, in his white shoes, white socks, white T-shirt and snug off-white shorts, looked like he’d just stepped off a tennis court in 1960. “I thought it sounded interesting,” he said, not making eye contact, when I asked why he’d chosen the tour. (My further attempts at conversation were greeted with disyllabic grunts.) The rest of my peers came from…elsewhere. I heard one pair of women speaking French, and I met a couple from Manitoba who’d already been on several bus tours that week.

As for films, there were a few curveballs — Igby Goes Down, Election, and Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail — but otherwise it was the usual Hollywood dreck: Clear and Present Danger, Deep Impact, The Sentinel, Independence Day, True Lies, The Pelican Brief, An American President, and a slew of other movies populated by middle-aged white men in unbuttoned, wind-blown suits. It makes you wonder if D.C. naturally attracts such execrable films, or if the location inspires such execrable plots.

There were, on occasion, factoids sufficiently interesting to commit to memory. For a week, anyway. Though I’m new to town, and not nearly as interested in continuity errors as other Washingtonians, I took note of the fact that in 1987’s No Way Out, Kevin Costner escapes some ruffians by descending into the Georgetown Metro station via the steps leading from the Shops at Georgetown Park to the C&O Canal. And then he boards a New York City Subway. (At the time, the WMATA prohibited filming in subway stations, but not anymore.)

After strolling Georgetown, where bookends of the Exorcist trilogy were filmed, we ate gratis cupcakes while driving by their source, Georgetown Cupcake (DC Cupcakes), where a line ran halfway up the block, and then on to U Street to visit Ben’s Chili Bowl (State of Play), which was so packed with hot flesh I didn’t bother stepping inside. Despite all the sights I’d seen, these two stops were the tours most instructive: I learned that people will wait in line for hours just for a cupcake or hot dog. Even if they haven’t seen them on a screen.

OK, you’ve been patient. The windows at DAR Constitution Hall were used as a stand-in for the White House windows in The West Wing. Enjoy the four hours I’ll never get back.