Life is old there, older than the sea.

West Virginia: The Movie
The Misappropriation of West Virginian Culture, written by a Mountain Mama
written by Emily on november 11th - 2003

I'm from West Virginia. I sat here for fifteen minutes trying to think of a more clever way to start this, but that's what I'm going with. Bring on the internet superstardom. Anyway, I'm from West Virginia. And though I've managed to live my 21 years devoid of most the hillbilly clichés (I dont watch NASCAR, I don't go to ramp dinners, I don't wear camouflage casually), the truth is that I was thrust into this world knee deep in Appalachian modality.

My mother was born the last of 12 children. She grew up in a one bedroom home that sat on a "holler." One of my aunts was born under the kitchen table of their home. They had no electricity until my mother was a high school student (in the mid 70s), and no running water. . .well, ever. A different aunt once hit one of my uncles in the head with a hammer for stealing the dirt she was playing with. My mom grew up thinking that was "fly swatter" was called a "flashwater," because she'd never heard it pronounced in any way but through the heavily accented lips of the adults in Calhoun County, West Virginia. I have various relatives named "Clem," "Willy," and "Boonie." The list goes on and on.

In spite of all this, or maybe because of it, I grew up with a fiercely loyal devotion to my home state. I say my home state because I moved to Richmond, due to West Virginia being fucking boring and sucking the life right out of me. High school can be a truly hellish time if you're not willing to spend Friday nights getting drunk in a field after going "muddin'." So, like any girl with big titties and an easy disposition, I spent most of my time alone, watching movies.

And that, folks, is where my problem lies. West Virginia doesn't tend to fare very well when given the cinematic treatment. I suppose it's not surprising that a state largely unrecognized by the rest of the country is forgotten by Hollywood. My problem is what happens when we DO meander onto the screen.

(Before I start, wanna see a trick? Hold your right hand up in a "Surf's UP!" gesture, with the pinky up, the other three fingers folded down, and your thumb sticking out. Now look at it. You've made a map of West Virginia. HEE HEE I WIN!)

1) Cultural Pigeonholing and GEOGRAPHIC INACCURACIES

Last summer, B dragged me out to see a film called, "Wrong Turn," because he knew it would make me mad. The film stars Eliza "What happened to my sexy?" Dushku, Jeremy "Creepy Jesus" Sisto, Hunky Square-Faced Guy, Stupid Face-in-Peril Girl, and Sexed Up Murder Victims One and Two. The plot, for those who don't know, is your typical, "Whoa we're teens in the woods OH NO something's chasing us RUN RUN RUN SPLAT everyone's dead but me" films. I should point out that no one at any time makes a wrong turn. Anyway, the Sexy Teens manage to get lost in West Virginia, where they find WHAT ELSE BUT a family of murderous hillbilly cannibals, hideously deformed by years of inbreeding. Now, despite what the X-files and Jeff Foxworthy humor may teach us, inbreeding is hardly a common occurrence in West Virginia. I'll admit, I did sit by a girl in 8th grade science who was supposedly getting fucked by her father. She talked to her chicken nuggets. But that was an isolated incident. These inbred cannibals are all 8 feet tall with shoddy spurts of hair in various places. One of them reminds me of the farmer from “The Tale of the Bunny Picnic,” the one who was always sneezing and limping around. Another looks like the Cryptkeeper, and spends the entire film running from place to place with his arms flapping at his sides doing a Daffy Duck laugh.

Eliza Dushku before “Wrong Turn,” and Eliza Dushku during. I guess I was wrong.
Someone did make a wrong turn. A wrong turn in life.

But really, the crippling generalizations about my home and my culture aside, the real problem with the film was that it was SO OBVIOUSY NOT SHOT IN WEST VIRGINIA. I don't ask for much. Once upon a time there was a movie called, "The Bodyguard" and in it, Kevin Costner played a man from West Virginia. At some point in the film Kevin takes Whitney Houston back to his childhood home, and we spend twenty minutes in "West Virginia" looking at a back drop of rocky, snow capped mountains. (Bonus e/n filler: SNOW CAPPED MOUNTAINS? WHAT I MEANT TO SAY IS THAT WHITNEY HOUSTON DOES A LOT OF COCAINE. ALSO, WATERWORLD WAS VERY BAD, MR. T IS FUNNY, AND I REMEMBER CARTOONS FROM MY CHILDHOOD. PIRATES!).

Actual mountains of West Virginia, and the Canadian “mountains” used for filming.

The problem here is that West Virginia is in the Appalachian mountain range, which is older than the Rockies and therefore the mountains are lower and rounded, as opposed to high and pointy. But at least they tried. In "Wrong Turn," the director decided it would be a good idea to have every third minute of film feature a long panning shot over the vast woods in which the Sexy Teens are lost. The problem? The long panning shots travel over flat land. Miles upon miles of wilderness, with nary a hill in sight. I'll bet if you listen to the director's commentary it gets to that shot and he's like, "O sorry wrong window. . . I mean wrong turn."

. . . and that was my big zinger to end that section.

2) Chris Cooper and the Coal Mining Industry.

It'd probably be easier to bring this article to some semblance of a point if every film set in West Virginia were really obnoxiously bad, but sadly it's just not true. Over the years there have been a couple of diamonds in the proverbial rough. However, years of research have shown me that, in order to make a movie set in WV that doesn't make me want to have sex with my cousin ***strikeout*** pluck my eyeballs out and hurl them at the screen, there are a couple of rules that must be followed.

1) The film must be about coal miners.

2) The film must star Chris Cooper.

The first example of this is the film, "Matewan" made in nineteen-dickety-seven. The film details the first major effort for unionization among coal miners, which lead up to the "Matewan massacre," a big gunfight between the miners and the mining company's police force. It's all very, "sixteen tons blah blah blah owe my soul to the company store," with lots of shots of West Virginia looking very bleak and soot-covered, as the mining towns tended to do. I'd go into more detail about the plot, but it's not really relevant, so here's a funny unrelated picture instead.

Another example is the film, "October Sky," based on the book, "Rocket Boys" by Homer Hickam, aka The Only West Virginian To Ever Go To College. In the film, Hickam (played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who should change his name to Beta McGuire) rebels against societal expectations (becoming a miner like his father) by. . . building rockets with the Sherminator. I dunno, I'm sure there's a big message about following your dreams or something, but it was probably lost in cow-eyed Gyllenhaal's blank stare. On a side note, isn't it odd how the Sherminator always winds up playing second banana to teenage guys trying to be better than they are? See also, "Angus." The kid that played Angus grew up to be Pruitt Taylor Vince. As another side note, I have no idea whether character actor humor is funny, but I'm going with it. I'm sure someone out there saw, "Heavy," which was like two hours of a fat guy walking into rooms and looking sad.

As stated, both of these films star Chris Cooper. In "Matewan," Cooper's character is the leader of the striking coal miners. In "October Sky" he's basically playing a pre-cursor to his "American Beauty" character, but with lighted helmet and without the homoeroticism. Because he's Chris Cooper, and should legally have "The smurfing talented" added to the beginning of his name, his performances in both films raise their respective bars. Really, Cooper is amazing in anything that doesn't involve him sexing his Mexican half-sister.

Someone please get that reference, please.

3) Vehicles For Once A-list Actors With Now Diminished Star Power Only Marginally Related To The Subject

Once again I'm having trouble with my segue ways, so I'm just going to go ahead and tell you which movies I'm making fun of in this part of the article: "Patch Adams" and "The Mothman Prophecies." I could try to pretend that I'm really irritated by famous actors starring in movies which misrepresent my state, but really, I just felt like I needed at third topic. I dunno if "Patch Adams" is even set in West Virginia. Hell, I don't even think I ever bothered to watch "Patch Adams." But I know that the actual guy is from and still lives in the state, and that the health care center that he has been building since the ‘70s, The Guzundheit Institute, is out in the middle of the woods somewhere. I don't think guzundheit is really the correct spelling, but I'm leaving it like that just so whomever formats this has to look it up. Emoticon Emoticon

The real Patch Adams. He used to drive the tour bus for the Grand Funk Railroad. And the Country Bears.

Yeah. Anyway, "The Mothman Prophecies" stars Richard Gere as a man who finds himself stuck in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and is tormented by some mysterious figure (who may or may not be moth-like), until a bridge falls down and the movie ends. Actual West Virginia history teaches us that there really was a "Mothman" (a nickname given by the local newspapers to describe a winged, red-eyed creature being reported by various locals in Point Pleasant during 1966 and '67), and that he/she/it held the small town in terror until Christmas Eve of 1967, when the Silver bridge collapsed suddenly and without explanation, killing 46 people and ending all sightings of the so-called "Mothman." So, for those of you without the benefit of the internet, here's a handy breakdown of the trues and falses.

YASE	NYET
A creature resembling a moth was spotted by locals in Point Pleasant, and the newspapers named it “Mothman” after the character from the Batman tv series.	At the first sighting of the creature, the local West Virginian yelled, “Mothman!” At which point, the entire city turned into poorly dubbed Asians and spent the next two years in terror while the giant beast devoured their quiet redneck mountain town.
The creature was said to make high-pitched whirring sounds, sort of like a generator.	“Chaaaaaaapstick!”
John Keel, world famous paranormal investigator, arrived in Point Pleasant to study the “Mothman.”	John Klein, world famous gerbil investigator (oh yes, I went there) arrived mysteriously in Point Pleasant after his wife, the world famous fag hag, was killed by the “Mothman” flying into her windshield. Or something.
Many “normal” people reported sightings of the “Mothman,” and some were so shaken up by the events that they had to seek medical attention.	“Normal person” Will Patton came in contact with the “Mothman” and proceeded to act so poorly that the entire state of West Virginia is still lodged somewhere in his digestive track.
The “Mothman” did not make prophecies.	The “Mothman” made prophecies.

In the film’s defense, the portrayal of West Virginia isn’t altogether offensive. The accents aren’t as overdone as they usually are. Laura Linney stars as the town’s sheriff, adding that much needed dose of pretension that is lacking in all the other films I’ve discussed so far. The only problem I could find (keeping in mind that the film itself is ass on every level) is that Point Pleasant is made to look like the town from “Northern Exposure.” But, that’s actually kind of accurate, so I’ll leave it alone. I only mentioned it for the satisfaction of knowing that now I’ve got the “Northern Exposure” theme song stuck in all of your heads. *