This is kinda neat, and it gives me an opportunity to borrow a page from Rhodester:

The movie Sommersby was neither a commercial blockbuster, nor a big critical success. It was a post-civil war story about a returning soldier who might not have been who he claimed to be. It stared Jodie Foster and Richard Gere, but apparently star-power alone isn't enough to turn a movie into a masterpiece.

I kinda like the film, but I'm biased. It was filmed in and around the part of Virginia where I live, and the summer of it's production brought a lot of excitement to the area.

A number of local people got to be extras in the movie. That's kinda cool. It's a bit of a distraction, though, when you're watching a movie set around the Civil War and find yourself saying things like "Hey, that's the guy who works the window at McDonnalds!"

After the filming I visited Warwickton, the period mansion where much of the movie was shot, and took a few pictures.

I took these pictures with an extremely cheap 35mm camera. And I scanned them with the first scanner I ever owned, which was about the size of a VW bus. I don't know why I saved such small scans, but these are the only ones I have. I came across them tonight while looking through some old media and deciding what to throw away and what to keep.

Above is the mansion itself, looking exactly like it does in the movie.

The slave quarters weren't authentic. In fact, if I remember what I was told correctly, the actual original owners of Warwickton weren't slave-owners. But some of the people in the story of Sommersby were slave-owners, so period-authentic slave quarters were built and they're still there.

I took this picture from the porch of Warwickton, looking toward the slave quarters.

During the filming of the movie Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford supposedly came into town and saw Sister Act at our local tiny little theater. That's far out, man.

Labels: Movies, Personal, Trivial Matters