Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 28, 1993 TAG: 9311250034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARY BISHOP STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WARD'S COVE LENGTH: Long
Thousands of acres of wide-open pastures and long valleys backdropped by steep mountains.
Sheep hunched over far hills. Limestone outcroppings in majestic crumble. Weather-beaten old farmhouses.
It's nostalgic enough to make you start humming the theme of the old "Lassie" TV show. You remember. Da DA da . . .
That's what filmmakers thought.
A 50th anniversary tribute to the original "Lassie" movie is just winding up filming here. There's talk of another movie here, maybe a western.
The southwestern corner of Tazewell County has made Hollywood pop its camera lens.
The opening scene alone from "Lassie" should be a heart-stopping showcase of Southwest Virginia, executive producer Michael Rachmil predicts. From a helicopter, the camera scans sheep on a high peak, those incredible mountains, a bright blue sky - and the gallant, sweet-faced Lassie, that four-legged symbol of American goodness.
Rachmil calls it his "Sound of Music" shot - one with the emotional voltage of Julie Andrews singing high in the Alps. "I think a lot of people are going to be calling up asking `Where did you shoot this?' " Rachmil said.
Questions of why and how are as interesting.
The original plot line was about a family, including a Timmy Martin-type kid, that flees the madness of Los Angeles for the peace of a Montana sheep farm. Wherever they shot the country scenes, it was going to be called Montana.
Filmmakers scoured several states for a run-down wooden farmhouse, lots of sheep, a few months of good weather and knockout beauty all around.
Utah was out. Snow comes too soon.
The Virginia Film Office drove the movie people around for three days in August. They nearly bit on Highland County, home of more sheep than people.
The last day, the crew rolled into Tazewell. Christy Parker, county economic development director, showed them three farms. One belonged to Clinton Bell, president of the Virginia Sheep Federation.
They saw his house. It was too nice.
Then Bell led them up a rough farm road to an abandoned two-story place built in the late 1880s. It was in need of a paint job. Groundhog hunters from Saltville had been staying there.
Bell showed them his 1,550 acres, 400 ewes and 300 head of cattle.
Bingo.
"The sun was going down. There was a purple haze," Parker said. "They'd just rolled the hay. There was a tree split by lightning in the back yard."
"It just looked great" to the filmmakers, she said. "They just went crazy taking rolls of pictures."
Rachmil said, "The farm is as we would have built it or pictured it in our minds." Site hunts in North Carolina, Georgia and elsewhere were called off.
And Tazewell County will be Tazewell County, not Montana, in the movie. And the family will be refugees from Baltimore, not Los Angeles.
Most Virginia movie scenes have been portrayed as someplace else - Smith Mountain Lake was New Hampshire in "What About Bob?"; Mountain Lake was the Catskills in "Dirty Dancing"; Roanoke was New York City in "Crazy People." Tazewell County will be its own gorgeous self.
That decision took a load off the crew, who had been wearing themselves out covering up Tazewell County school bus lettering and other local identifiers. They could also give up trying to make Short Mountain, behind the house, look like the Rockies.
Locals hope the movie, due out next summer or fall, will do for Southwest Virginia what "Thelma and Louise" did for Monument Valley. They've seen that moviemakers are cash cows: hardly any pollution, and fun to have around.
Parker figures the film has dropped $5 million to $6 million on the local economy already - mega-money for a county that has lost three manufacturers and hundreds of jobs during the last couple of years.
The biggest star at the back-country site is Lassie himself. Yes, it's a he, and his name's really Howard.
He's described as an eighth-generation descendant of the original Lassie, whose real name was Pal. (One dog in the lineage was actually called Lassie - Lassie Jr., son of Pal.)
Tazewell County fans say Howard is magnificent: taller and maybe 20 pounds heftier than your run-of-the-kennel collie. He and three other stand-in collies - one good at swimming, one at window-jumping - are here with trainer Bob Weatherwax, son of original Lassie trainer Rudd Weatherwax.
Even the independent production company's name is pure Lassie. It's EEE-YAW-KEE Inc. - homage to the secret call of Timmy's TV friend Porky to lure Timmy outside.
Human-wise, this isn't a big-star picture. And it's not as big a production as "Sommersby," shot in Virginia last year.
But the Lassie producers and some of the actors are pros. Producer is Lorne Michaels of "Saturday Night Live" fame. Director Daniel Petrie Sr. did "Raisin in the Sun" and "Cocoon: The Return."
Actor Frederic Forrest ("Apocalypse Now") is in it, as is Richard Farnsworth, known for "The Grey Fox." He was in "Two Jakes" with Forrest.
Rachmil, the executive producer, produced "Roxanne," "L.A. Story," "Punchline" and "Coneheads." Production manager George Manasse's credits include "Indecent Proposal."
The crew moves to Richmond soon for three weeks of city shots. Sorry, Richmond. You're probably going to be Baltimore in the picture.
The filmmakers vow they'll be back in Tazewell.
"I'm definitely going to come back and make another movie," Rachmil said, glancing at the dramatic hills beyond the window of his production trailer. "You could do a western down here."
by CNB