“Box office hits” aren’t the first thing other people think about when Kentucky comes to mind. Horses and bourbon, yes, but the state of Bluegrass is not exactly known for attracting film teams and star actors.
There are quite a few popular films that have been shot in Kentucky. For some films, such as “Secratariat” and “The Coalminer’s Daughter,” the state was the apparent selection for the backdrop due to its connection to the story, but some of the films on the list may surprise you.
Here is a list of some of the videos recorded in Kentucky:
“Raintree County” is based on the 1948 novel of the same name through Ross Lockridge Jr. and tells the story of an abolitionist (Montgomery Clift) who falls in love with an attractive Southerner (Elizabeth Taylor) from the Civil War.
The film had several filming locations, adding Mississippi, Tennessee and two Kentucky locations: the historic Liberty Hall in Frankfurt and spaces in and around Danville.
According to TVGuide.com, director Edward Dmytryk said Clift had begun to exhibit a bizarre filming habit, especially while in Danville, after being injured in a car destination twist in the middle of production. At a party dinner in Kentucky, Clift ordered his steak “bleeding blue,” almost raw, and covered it with butter and pepper before eating it with his bare hands. He was also reportedly discovered running naked around the city, and a police officer was stationed outside his hotel room door for the remainder of the shooting in Danville.
The 007-era film starring Sean Connery as James Bond is set basically in England and Switzerland, but partly filmed in Fort Knox.
The plot focuses on the villain Goldfinger’s plan to contaminate the gold found in the U.S. bullion depot at Fort Knox. The exterior of the authentic Fort Knox is shown in the film, all the interiors of the buildings have been recreated at Pinewood Studios in England, according to movie-locations.com.
“Goldfinger” was the first Bond film to win an Oscar, winning the most productive sound edition in 1965.
“Harlan County, USA,” Winner of the Oscar for Best Documentary in 1976, covers the Brookside attack on the Brookside mine and preparation plant in Harlan County.
Documentary filmmaker Barbara Kopple began filming in Harlan County with plans to control Miners for Democracy and the attempt to overthrow Tony Boyle, president of United Mine Workers of America from 1963 to 1972. He replaced the target of his film when the miners of the Brookside mine in 1973 made a strike that lasted more than a year.
“With unprecedented access, Kopple and his team captured the miners’ infrequently violent fights with the strikers, local police and society thugs,” according to Criterion Collection, which includes the documentary in his library. “With a haunting Soundtrack Array … the film is a heartbreaking record for the thirteen-month struggle between a suffering network and a company committed to monetary results.”
There is no better position for country music star Loretta Lynn’s biographical film than her home country. The film was shot in Letcher County, just over an hour from Johnson County, where Lynn was born and raised. The story follows Lynn from her teenage years until her rise to fame.
Whitesburg, Kentucky, the Mountain Eagle newspaper reported that dozens of Letcher County citizens discovered transitory paintings on set as filming extras, filling the backdrop behind Sissy Spacek, who won an Oscar for Best Actress for her role as Lynn.
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The military comedy starring Bill Murray and John Candy began filming in Kentucky in 1980 before moving to California. The film filmed scenes at Fort Knox to create the fictional Fort Arnold, as well as in Louisville and on-site at the Old Jim Beam distillery in Clermont. Jim Beam allowed the team to run a tank in some of their former warehouses that were no longer in use, according to the Kentucky Film Office.
Parts of this Oscar-winning comedy-drama were filmed in Cincinnati, where the story unfolds, the film crew crossed the border several times to shoot scenes in northern Kentucky.
Filming locations included Evergreen Cemetery in Southgate, Kentucky, where the funeral scene was filmed, as well as the Convent of St. Anne in Melbourne and the Italian restaurant Pompilio in Newport.
Sister Alice Gerdeman, an impressive provincial of the Divine Providence Congregation in the Center of the Province of Santa Ana, said in an interview at the Cincinnati WCPO station that the convent sought to raise the budget for a transport vehicle for sisters who were missionaries in West Africa. worked very well” to get paid for the shoot. The convent served as the setting for the psychiatric establishment where Dustin Hoffman’s character lived.
The film won 4 Academy Awards for Best Picture.
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Starring Emily Lloyd and Bruce Willis, “In Country” is based on Bobbie Ann Mason’s novel and is set in the fictional town of Hopewell, Kentucky.
To prepare for her role as a recent Kentucky high school graduate to get data about her late father, Lloyd stayed in Paducah with a local attorney and his family, according to an archived New York Times article. He also trained to speak with a Kentucky accent.
Many movie scenes were shot in the Jackson Purchase area, where Mason grew up. The doctor’s job site with no appointment that was noticed in the film is a dry cleaner who changed the name “Clothes Doctor” after he gave the impression on the film, according to IMDb.
“The Insider,” starring Al Pacino and Russell Crowe, is based on a true story about Jeffrey Wigand, a tobacco industry whistleblower. It was partially filmed in Louisville, where Wigand lived with his circle of relatives at the time the story took place. The film used the genuine courtroom in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where Wigand testified in genuine life.
This film is loosely based on the story of Seabiscuit, a thoroughbred racehorse champion whose small length and unlikely good fortune turned it into a media sensation and a symbol of hope during the Great Depression.
The colt grew up on a farm in Paris, Kentucky, where several scenes from the film were shot. Keeneland’s race track in Lexington was used as a Pimlico racetrack in Maryland, where Seabiscuit defeated the 1937 war admiral, the triple crown winner, in four lengths.
The film’s world premiere took place at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington on July 19, 2003. It has been nominated for several Academy Awards, Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Costume Design.
Another story of a mythical racehorse, “Secretariat” tells the life of the 1973 Triple Crown winner.
The team toured in Lexington and Louisville for 3 weeks. Before the Disney film ended, Bill Doolittle reported that director Randall Wallace knew the scenes at the scene in Kentucky would be crucial, “not only for the place, but also for the people.”
The Kentucky Derby soared at Churchill Downs and the Belmont in Keeneland, Doolittle reported. The stands were full of extras, some of which said they were there when the Secretariat itself won the Derby. The owner of the Secretariat, Penny Chenery, also in the stands and gave the impression in the film.
Here’s an 11th bonus that’s rarely very “famous” because it hasn’t come out yet.
“The Stand-In,” directed through Jamie Babbit and starring Drew Barrymore, will premiere in April at the Tribeca Film Festival, which was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The comedy tells the story of a stranded movie star named Candy who gets caught up in tax evasion. You have to move on to rehab, but you hire your previous update, Paula, to update it. Candy soon uses Paula to update everything she needs in life, but Paula begins to resume Candy’s career and even moves in with her boyfriend.
The film was shot in Versailles and Lexington in February 2019. Saban Films recently obtained the distribution rights to the film, Deadline reported.
Contact journalist Emma Austin at [email protected] or on Twitter at @emmacaustin.