He is, that is not a joke. Ben Affleck is my town filming a movie directed by David Fincher that also stars Rosamund Pike, Tyler Perry and Neil Patrick Harris.
Back in February, a location scout visited my office about potential locations for the film adaptation of Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The book is set on a Mississippi River town in Missouri....which I live in. My boss and I had lunch with the location scout and crossed our fingers that it would work out.
In April another location scout, Steve, showed up. We'd sit around the conference table with our staff + Steve, and he'd tell us what kind of backdrop they were looking for and we'd map out spots that might work. We were expecting MAYBE 2 weeks of filming, mostly exterior shots, with the high likelihood that tax credits wouldn't go through or the director would get into town and hate it...so much could've gone wrong.
And to make this long story moderately shorter, they've been filming Gone Girl here in town for about 3 weeks now. Crew has been here since the spring renovating locations and getting everything set up. What started out as a handful of exteriors has turned into WAY more shooting than we'd thought we'd get. Turns out they're filming right about half of Gone Girl right here!
Cape Girardeau will be masquerading as the fictional town of North Carthage, just like in the book:
This is actually a city police car they leased and changed the town name on:
In the book, Nick owns a Bar:
It's been surreal. Huge lighting rigs are all over downtown, there are signs up in locations lawns to not cut the grass, and it seems like everyone has had a movie star encounter but this girl! Keep your fingers crossed for me!
Overall the economic impact is going to work out to be enormous, and regardless of how Cape is portrayed in the film, the publicity is a gold mine. Plus it's just been a very unique experience overall.
Rumor on the street is Ben is super nice, he's been happy to take pictures with all of the excited locals that have fun into him. TONS of local folks are acting as extras. I just can't wait to see Cape on the big screen!
Have you read Gone Girl?
That's awesome, how exciting! I haven't read it but this may be the extra push I need - I don't usually read anything too suspenseful because my imagination goes wild, but I'll let you know if I decide to!
ReplyDeleteIt has been crazy exciting, we're going to be so sad to see them go! I read it (wouldn'tve w/o them filming here to be honest, not too much of a thriller type unless it's Stephen King or Michael Crichton) and it's a quick read, if that helps.
DeleteThat's awesome! I read Gone Girl and was picturing a town like Perryville in the book, so this is great! And meeting with the location scout- baller!! :)
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