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"Cold
Mountain" comes to Virginia
If
you were filming a Civil War novel in which critical
scenes occur during bloody battles around Petersburg,
you’d want to film it in Virginia, right? The folks
at Miramax thought so, or sort of.
Filming
of “Cold Mountain,” a tale about a wounded
Confederate soldier’s travels to his mountain home
during the last days of the Civil War, began earlier
this year in Romania. Apparently the filmmakers thought
that backward Balkan country is a good substitute for
the Old South. But they did pick the Old Dominion for
some filming last month.
The
film features two of today’s hottest film stars.
Jude Law is Inman, who sneaks out of a hospital and
hobbles back home. Nicole Kidman plays Ada, the proper
Charlestonian and Inman’s lover who ends up managing
a wilderness farm with no men around to help out. The
movie is based on the National Book Award-winning novel
by Charles Frazier, a North Carolina writer who drew
on his family folklore for this story of war and love.
Filmmakers picked the Williamsburg and Richmond areas
to film parts of the movie, and in August held an open
casting call at the Williamsburg Outlet Mall looking
for extras.
The
Virginia Film Office has wanted to have a part in the
making of “Cold Mountain” ever since the book
first came out in 1998, says Mary Nelson, communications
manager. Talks lasted two years. “We track films
that are in development that we think would be good
in Virginia,” she says. “Virginia is a wonderful
state for filming, because we can film almost anything
here. In the case of the Civil War, we have to have
locations that were here during the Civil War and that
look like they were here in the Civil War.”
Hundreds
of movies, documentaries and television shows have been
filmed here, Nelson says, and the film industry has
had more than $1 billion in economic impact for the
state over the past 20 years. “Cold Mountain”
will be released in December 2003.
—
Leila Marija Ugincius
Return to Virginia Business - October
2002
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