Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 26, 1994 TAG: 9408170040
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: TAZEWELL LENGTH: Long
I mean, that IS local lawyer Henry Barringer opening a door in one scene, right?
And that is sheep farmer Clinton Bell - right? - jumping on a tractor in another scene?
And, hey, aren't those three guys chewing tobacco in front of a country store really Cracker Lowe, Bev Smith and Fuzz Mays, all local guys from just down the road?
Yes on all accounts, and if a farmer looked real close, he might even spot the worn-out overalls he sold to movie folks in their clamoring for authentic farm clothes.
Though the credits don't even say it was filmed here, ``Lassie'' is as homemade a product of Tazewell County as sorghum and sheep.
All last fall, people rented out their homes, hired on as extras and pumped their community's resources into the making of the movie. Businesses and families reaped about $5 million from it.
Seeing ``Lassie'' when it opened nationally and at Tazewell Cinema last weekend, locals said that except for a few phony Southern accents, it was pretty much true to their place.
They're accustomed to living in beautiful country, but even local families oohed and ahhed over the tender camera treatment of Tazewell County's high pastures.
The opening scene of Lassie herding sheep along a ridge line - with symphonic movie score soaring - actually was shot nearby at Rosedale in Russell County. Some filming was done at Sandstone Falls on the New River near Hinton, W.Va.
But Tazewell County is the cinematic star. Much of the film lingers in scenes of the Clinch River, Burkes Garden, Knob Mountain, the old Cove School, a contemporary house in the county, the Wardell Ham Store near Claypool Hill and, most of all, the 1,400-acre Barns Company Farm in the south end of the county.
Clinton Bell farms his family's enormous spread. His family leased some of it to the moviemakers.
For months, he herded his 400 ewes back and forth across pastures to suit the movie director. One thing Bell knows for sure: No matter what the press kit claims, Lassie can't herd.
All those scenes of her - and actually it's a ``him'' - expertly guiding the sheep around was a masterful deception. Actually, Bell said, trainers could make Lassie circle the sheep but that was about it. Collies apparently aren't much good at sheepherding.
The focal point of the movie is an old house on Bell's land that becomes home to Lassie and her new family. The house had no real inhabitants except for a few weekend groundhog hunters for years, so it was fairly rundown when the movie crew grabbed it last summer.
Filmmakers needed it a little more dilapidated, or more photogenically so. So they put old-fashioned wallpaper inside and produced fake peeling and water stains. They weathered the outside to give it a more romantic look.
They preserved the interior in photographs and then collected the furnishings so they could re-create the house for final scenes shot at a Richmond warehouse. Enormous photographs of Tazewell's hills were set up outside the windows of the Richmond sets.
Before they left Tazewell, movie crews nabbed antiques from Hillsville and local shops and redecorated the house for flashback scenes. Bell figures just painting the exterior of the house was worth $5,000, and moviemakers put loads of gravel on his road to help their trucks. ``We came out all right on this,'' he said.
Locals were impressed by filmmakers' attention to detail as the crew examined their film from days or weeks before and carefully replicated a scene when they needed to shoot in a spot again. ``If there was one single leaf on a limb, they had that leaf on a limb,'' said Mag Peery, a Tazewell teacher.
She's one of only two local people with speaking parts. Peery's a teacher here, and that's what she plays in the movie. She also was real-life teacher during the filming to four child actors, including film star Thomas Guiry.
Bobby Brittain, Clinton Bell's tobacco-chewing cousin, served as guide to the movie crew and won the other speaking role.
Friday night's audience in Tazewell erupted in cheers when Brittain, seated among them, appeared on the screen showing a lead actor how to mend a fence and performing an expert spit of tobacco juice. Brittain's a wealthy businessman, so the crowd hooted all the more when later in the movie somebody says the fence-fixers earned a mere $5 an hour.
Everything's quiet since the filming ended in December. Bell's field, where the movie trailers and the catering tent once bustled with Hollywood actors, is planted deep in alfalfa.
Bell got a kick out of all the commotion, and he has a keepsake that should last many years.
High on a hill above his house, the name ``Lassie'' is carved into a big maple, just as the tree appears at the end of the movie.
In Roanoke, the movie can be seen at Salem Valley 8 and at Tanglewood Mall cinemas.
by CNB