Thursday, October 19, 2006

Why Goshen is the next Hollywood

A few times over the course of my film internship with Elsewhere, when I mentioned that I was interested in working on more films, people implied that this sort of work would be much easier to find in LA (or, I presume, in New York). I'm sure this is true, but having just bought a house in the merry little town of Goshen, I have no intention of moving any time soon. In any case, I'm not particularly worried about my film career, because I think that Goshen is the next Hollywood.

According to an article on independent film by David Bordwell, companies like Fox and MGM started out as "independents" who moved to the west coast to get away from "the studio" (at the time, the Motion Picture Patents Company). More and more people starting making independent films, and at some point the town of Hollywood, CA became synonomous with filmmaking. New York, and more recently, Chicago, have also become big places for filmmaking, simply because people started making films there.

In the last few years, people have started making films in Goshen. New World Arts has not one, but two short film festivals every year. A few years ago, a Goshen College grad that I went to school with made the award-winning Pearl Diver. Other Goshen residents and GC grads worked on and starred in Corduroy. Actor Steve Buscemi and LOTR star Liv Tyler directed and starred (respectively) in Lonesome Jim, filmed in Goshen and nearby Cromwell. And finally, Elsewhere, the film I worked on, was not only filmed in Goshen, but is set in Goshen, Indiana, and features actors from cult favorite films Office Space and Napoleon Dynamite.

Clearly, Goshen is not only producing film talent, but also attracting it. This is why I fully intend to continue my career in film, not by flying to California (although I do hope to do that some time), but by involving myself in the myriad of film projects that are going to keep coming to Goshen, Indiana.

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1 Comments:

Blogger mennorose said...

Hmmm, interesting idea....I just wanted to point out, now that I work in Noble County, and know stuff, that Lonesome Jim was filmed in Cromwell, not Ligonier.

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