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30 years ago, Beetlejuice raised haunting questions: Where is home? Where do you belong in the world and to whom do you belong? And what happens when you die? That surreal, sentimental amalgam is how a movie made for just $14 million became a Halloween classic, a Universal Studios theme park attraction, a Saturday morning cartoon and a Broadway-bound musical at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.

Smithsonian Magazine takes a trip in search of the real star of the film: the hamlet of East Corinth, Vermont, population 926, the setting for the fictional town of Winter River, Connecticut, the place the Maitlands go to scary lengths to stay even after death. “It was stunning,” recalls Mary Galloway, Beetlejuice’s location manager, who also scouted spots in Massachusetts and Virginia. “There’s an energy, a kind of eccentricity that flourishes in those places.”

At the Corinth Historical Society Agricultural and Trades Museum, located on the town’s main street, Village Road, co-director Norm Collette volunteers to drive writer Holly Millea around town to see the legacy of Beetlejuice. The buildings are a little more rundown then when Hollywood descended in 1987, but the town has fared better than some seemingly bucolic New England villages. Too many have been hollowed out by industry and population loss until becoming little more than stage sets for visitors. East Corinth’s bobbin factory might be long gone, but the building has been reclaimed by a solar-powered hammock manufacturer, and, yeah, Norm says, it’s hard to convince the children who grow up here to return after college, but the minuscule population has actually grown a little over the last three decades thanks to artists, musicians and others eager to unplug.

Our destination is Paula Jewell’s family farm, where the film’s most recognizable fixture once stood—the Maitlands’ home, which in reality was a shell built for exterior shots. The huge, white, multi-level Victorian was erected high on a hill overlooking the village. “Everyone in town called the house ‘the castle,’” Norm says, as he steers the car onto a private road.

“I wasn’t here when they built it,” says Paula Jewell, 88, whose family has owned the property for three generations. She was away working at the B&M Beans factory in Maine at the time. The castle is long gone now. “My nephew took it down. My brother took some of it, built a little shed.”

Turning back onto Village Road, Norm says we could park and walk, but the sun is high and hot and he thinks it’s best to drive along the single block dotted with the film’s other locations. All are familiar from the first few minutes of the film, before the Maitlands’ untimely demise. Most of the rest of the movie and all of its hellish elements, including the desert crawling with gigantic sandworms and the “neitherworld”—a waiting room full of goners who expect to meet their maker, but instead must take a number to meet a caseworker—were filmed on a Hollywood soundstage. But tourists trek here, even 30 years later, because it’s the time Beetlejuice spends in the actual town that transforms the movie from a campy ghost story into something unexpectedly moving.

Norm slows down and points out the Masonic hall, which doubled in the film as Miss Shannon’s School for Girls, before driving over the since-renovated bridge where the Maitlands, swerving to avoid a dog, crashed into the river. A little farther down the road we see the old general store, which was transformed into Maitland Hardware Store. Once the oldest continuously operated general store in the state, it was sold 12 years ago to a flatlander who had big plans to restore the structure, but instead moved to Florida. It’s since gone to ruin—a total eyesore.

Right next door is Sarah Polli’s house, which played the part of Jane Butterfield’s Real Estate and Antiques in the film. (The Winter River Fire Department? That was her garage.) “Oh, it was very exciting,” Sarah says, sitting at her kitchen table with a high pile of photos taken during the ten days of filming in town. Among the pictures are a smiling 31-year-old Geena Davis flanked by her visiting parents, another of her holding an umbrella to protect her ghostly pallor, and another of the library, which was completely surrounded by a fiberglass facade to replicate the original library built in 1902. The old codger seen polishing faux lion statues in one photo—and in the movie—is Sarah’s uncle, Maurice Page. “All the actors just loved him,” she says. “He got royalties for years! Not much. He had one line: ‘Hey, how are ya?’”

My tour ends down the hill and across the street from where the castle once stood, at the Youngs’ house. A handsome couple, Neil and Louise were born and raised in East Corinth and have lived in their tidy home since their wedding 62 years ago. Neil, who served in the Army, worked in the bobbin factory and the granite plant, and spent 14 years as the chief of the fire department. At 88, he’s tied with his close friend Paula for the title of East Corinth’s oldest resident. Most nights Paula joins them for dinner. No surprise Neil shares her view of the film: “We went to White River Junction to see it. I think it was the biggest $5 bill I ever wasted.” ... See MoreSee Less

5 hours ago

The Afterlife of Beetlejuice

smithsonianmag.com

The

Ozark has been a huge hit for Netflix, earning it a #LMGIaward last year. The plot centres around financial planner Marty Byrde who relocates his family from Chicago to Osage Beach, a summer resort community in Missouri after a money laundering scheme goes wrong. He has to make amends to a Mexican drug cartel by setting up a bigger laundering operation there, but becomes entangled with local criminals.

The crime drama is set in the real-life location of The Ozarks, a mountain and lake region that is located in four different states. While the interior shots were filmed in Eagle Rock Studios Atlanta in Georgia, most of the exterior filming took place around Lake Allatoona and Lake Lanier.

Marty Byrde takes over a sleepy lakeside business called The Blue Cat Lodge, and this is where he launders his money. These scenes were filmed on the site of the former Little River Grill restaurant on Lake Allatoona in Canton, Georgia.

The Bagnell Dam can be found at the Lake of the Ozarks, a large reservoir in central Missouri, and the surrounding area featured when 13-year-old Jonah Byrde wandered off there on his own. The area is filled with restaurants, candy stores, ice-cream parlours, nostalgic gift shops, music and classic arcades. You’ll find arcade games and water activities on the Bagnell Dam Strip as well. The lake itself is nicknamed ‘The Magic Dragon’ thanks to its serpentine shape.

Other notable locations to look out for are Victoria Harbour Marina and the Williamson Bros. Bar-B-Q restaurant in Marietta, which can both be seen in episode four of season one , and the Silver Skillet diner in Atlanta in episode eight. ... See MoreSee Less

1 day ago

Netflix's Ozark is back; here's where you can find the US filming locations

lonelyplanet.com

Head to Georgia for the real-life locations of the popular series.

Nicknamed “Scaussie Noir” as a nod to its Scottish and Australian crossover, The Cry was filmed on both sides of the globe – as Joanna (Jenna Coleman) and Alistair (Ewen Leslie) take their baby son Noah from Glasgow to Melbourne.

Executive producer Claire Mundell said she was “thrilled” to be shooting the drama “in the incredible Australian light of Melbourne, and contrasting that with the beautiful West End of Glasgow.” But what are the locations we see on screen?

Filming for The Cry took place in Glasgow. Coleman told the Scottish Sun: “We’ve been out to Loch Lomond to shoot and all over the city to Hamilton and Finnieston and we went to Pollok Park so we’ve got a really good sweep.”

Jenna Coleman and other stars including Ewen Leslie and Sophie Kennedy Clark were spotted shooting scenes all over the city, including Argyle Street and outside the Gallery of Modern Art.

The Cry uses the Australian coastal town of Queenscliff as one key location, with filming taking place inside the Queenscliff Grocer in Hesse Street, and outside Portarlington Lighthouse, according to the Geelong Advertiser.

Melbourne’s inner city area will also appear on screen, as well as nearby Williamstown. Other locations include the Western Harbour Anglers Club, Presbyterian Church and the Jawbone Fauna and Flora Reserve.

The Cry’s Melbourne location manager Nicci Dillon told Film Victoria: “I was tasked with finding the locations that would not only work to Jacqueline Perske’s amazing adaptation but also ones that visually juxtaposed the vast horizons and big blue skies of Australia against the grey skies and cooler landscapes of Glasgow.” ... See MoreSee Less

2 days ago

Where is The Cry filmed in Australia and Scotland?

radiotimes.com

Take a closer look at the filming locations featured in BBC1's new Jenna Coleman drama

As Ryan Gosling re-created Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind during the climactic moon landing scene in First Man, the audience at Atlantic Station was fully engrossed in the awe-inspiring moment.

It was slightly disorienting when the movie theater lights came on a few minutes later, transporting the viewer from outer space back into the advanced screening. That jet lag-feeling intensified when Gosling and Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle came in and divulged that the “moon” was actually a gray rock quarry just outside Atlanta.

Chazelle, had not filmed in Atlanta before this recent drama. The metro area was able to re-create a “host of topographies,” including space, the moon and circa-1960s Houston, California and Florida, the director said during an interview at the Fernbank Science Center on Tuesday.

The production team found an empty lot in Roswell to replicate the family’s home, brick by brick, during Armstrong’s tenure at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Chazelle and Gosling remembered neighbors passing space-themed cookies around to crew members during a night shoot.

“That neighborhood was very understanding and gracious. Oftentimes I think it can put people out to have a film being shot in their neighborhood,” Gosling said. “And maybe it was, but they certainly never made us feel that way. They were just very supportive, and invested, and involved.”

Georgia didn’t always cooperate, though. Chazelle wanted to avoid using computer-generated images; no easy feat when you’re shooting scenes of men walking on the moon. The team sculpted the landscape at Stockbridge’s Vulcan Rock Quarry one January but ran into an unexpected issue: snow on the moon. The actors had to shoot other scenes back at Tyler Perry Studios while the satellite thawed out.

Chazelle also strove for authenticity in the film that’s based off James Hansen’s biography “First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong.” Armstrong’s sons, Rick and Mark, were heavily consulted and even had small roles in the mission control scene.

For Rick Armstrong, who was 12 at the time of the mission, walking into the Roswell replica of his childhood home nearly 50 years later was “pretty interesting.”

“The living room was really good,” he said in an interview. “They spent a lot of effort to make that just like it was, down to the red tile on the floor.”

From the first scene, where Gosling as Armstrong is rocketing toward space as a test pilot, terror is injected back into the sometimes taken for granted accomplishment of the moon landing. Proved to be a team capable of producing marvelous results, Chazelle and Gosling said they hope to work together again. For now, though, the next move is unclear.

“Going to the moon is a tough experience to beat,” Gosling said. ... See MoreSee Less

3 days ago

How metro Atlanta helped makers of ‘First Man’ capture Armstrong’s story

ajc.com

Metro Atlanta helped Neil Armstrong movie 'First Man,' starring Ryan Gosling, capture everything from 1960s Houston to the moon

Patrick Mignano is always on-the-go scouting locations for, most notably, Clint Eastwood. Mignano is currently on-location in Las Cruces, New Mexico, but called in to talk with Long Beach 908 Magazine about his experience filming in Long Beach, California.

Mignano's spoke about filming 'American Sniper' in Long Beach : "We used an apartment complex there on Bixby Village Drive to shoot where Chris Kyle’s future wife lived in the film. And we shot it there because it worked for the scene and because we paired it with the work we shot in Seal Beach. We shot at O’Malley’s on Main Street and we shot out on the pier; we were doubling Seal Beach for Oceanside."

On working with Clint Eastwood : "He’s a really nice man, a real professional who knows what he wants. There’s not a lot of wasted energy with him. He’s got a pretty tight-knit crew; a lot of the guys have been with him almost 30 years. I’ve been working with him for 11 years. We shoot fast and we’re very fiscally responsible for what we do and he’s producing great movies. He liked the Long Beach locations and he loved the bar [O’Malley’s]. We created an arcade at the beginning of the pier where Chris Kyle wins a stuffed bear for his girlfriend playing a target game. Clint thought it was a great look."

Mignano on other movies filmed in Long Beach : "I remember “Starship Troopers” in 1996 and we shot at the Pyramid at Long Beach State. There is a scene where the characters play a futuristic football game, and we used the inside of the pyramid as their football stadium. I did another movie called “Phoenix” with Ray Liotta….We filmed at the Blue Cafe. We filmed in the alley behind it as well and there was a taco stand on the other side of the alley. I also remember there were some apartments on Carson [Street], east of Atlantic Avenue, where we shot Ray Liotta’s apartment in the film." ... See MoreSee Less

4 days ago

Spotlight: Location Manager Patrick Mignano | Home | Long Beach 908

lb908.com

For Patrick Mignano, Long Beach is more than just home; it’s a place to make movie magic. Learn more about the Long Beach native who is best known f...