From the moment he saw it, Virginia Film Festival director Jody Kielbasa had no qualms about opening this year’s fest with Big Stone Gap, a screen adaptation of the popular novel by Adriana Trigiani, who grew up in the movie’s Southwest Virginia town and now lives in Manhattan. “First and foremost, it’s a really good film with a high-profile cast shot here in the Commonwealth,” he said. And the mission of the Virginia Film Festival since it began 27 years ago has been to support filmmaking in Virginia. “Big Stone Gap is a film made in Virginia, by a Virginian, and about Virginia,” he said. While the Big Stone Gap premiere is the highest profile event at this year’s festival, it’s far from the only attraction at the four-day film extravaganza, which Kielbasa describes as having one of the best lineups in the festival’s history. In the following pages, we highlight fan and critical favorites. We also had the privilege of speaking with Barry Levinson about his canon of work, and with Hal Holbrook about a career devoted to an American icon.
Virginia is for filmmakers
Big Stone Gap brings the business of movie making home
While Adriana Trigiani is well-known as the best-selling author of 15 books including Big Stone Gap, which is set in her hometown in Southwest Virginia, who knew that she has credits as a writer and producer on shows like “The Cosby Show,” “A Different World,” and “CityKids”?
“I started as a playwright,” said Trigiani in a phone interview. And Big Stone Gap started as a screenplay before it was published as a novel in 2001. Now she’s circling back to her roots as screenwriter and director of Big Stone Gap the movie, which is set to premiere at this year’s Virginia Film Festival.
Trigiani sees no big divide between writing a novel and writing a screenplay. While writing a book is a solitary task and filmmaking a collaborative one, “I look at it like one whole piece of storytelling,” she said.
A romantic tale of a quirky small town set in 1978 with an all-star cast including Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, Whoopi Goldberg, Jane Krakowski, Jasmine Guy, and Jenna Elfman, the movie has everything going for it—except for distribution. At least at press time. And Trigiani and festival organizers think that’s just around the corner.
Trigiani’s family moved to Big Stone Gap in 1966 when she was six and her father started a blouse factory as part of the war on poverty and a way to augment the earning power of women in an area dominated by the coal industry. “I’m devoted to shining a light on this area,” she said. “I really wanted to celebrate what I grew up with.”
She fought to have the low-budget movie (she said she was told not to reveal its cost) made in her hometown, and didn’t want it to end up like Cold Mountain, which was also set in Appalachia, but filmed in Prague.
How hard was it to lure the cast to Big Stone Gap? “You know what got the cast?” she asked. “The script.”
Actress Jenna Elfman confirms that the writing appealed to her, particularly her character, the charming, colorful, and loyal Iva Lou. “I loved that it is a period piece and Southern,” she said in an e-mail. “I had always wanted to do a piece like this.”
L.A.-born Elfman, who will be in Charlottesville for the premiere, said Big Stone Gap was a “refreshing change from living in Hollywood” and the people were warm, friendly, and welcoming. “I absolutely loved my time there,” she said.
Norfolk-raised Patrick Wilson has roots in Big Stone Gap—he spent summers there as a kid, and he stayed in his grandmother’s house while filming, he told Southern Living. And to make it even more of a family affair, his brother Paul appears in the film.
Trigiani stayed at her mother’s house while making the movie and noticed a big difference. “When you’re making a movie, it’s not your hometown,” she said. “It’s a set.”
And while it was mostly a ready-made one, there were some changes made to the houses and businesses she’d been to as a child. For instance, the gas station was turned into a diner.
By the third day as director, Trigiani said she knew her vision of the movie was going to work and that she’d be able to convince everyone else it was going to work. A year later, that confidence is undiminished: “You’re going to flip when you see it,” she predicted.
“There are a lot of heroic accolades to Adriana for insisting it be shot in her beloved hometown of Big Stone Gap,” said Andy Edmunds, director of the Virginia Film Office. Edmunds said he worked with Trigiani for 15 years to get the movie made in Virginia.
But luring film production is a competitive business—40 states have incentive programs—and the economics of shooting in a rural area have to work out, reminded Edmunds. “It’s show business, not show fun,” he said.
Tell that to the locals in Big Stone Gap. “All my friends are in the movie,” said Trigiani.
“People just showed up for crowd scenes in period dress and they brought their own lunch,” said Edmunds, praising the community support for the film.
Big Stone Gap received $1.1 million in incentives, which typically are tax credits and grants. The Virginia Film Office put in $600,000, said Edmunds, and the Tobacco Commission ponied up $500,000 in grants, according to its interim director, Tim Pfohls.
The economic impact of Big Stone Gap is close to $4 million, Edmunds estimated, “not including tourism.”
A recent study of 11 productions filmed in Virginia, among which are Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks, and AMC’s series, “Turn,” concluded that for every dollar spent in incentives, Virginia’s economy received back $11.80, far exceeding the cost of incentives and adding up to about $365 million a year, said Edmunds. “Our goal is a $1 billion industry by 2020,” he said.
Currently, Georgia rules in providing tax incentives to production companies, while North Carolina, which has had a successful film industry for decades, pulled the incentive plug earlier this year. “North Carolina’s incentives went away not because of a lack of success—several TV shows were spending millions there,” said Edmunds. “Their incentives were shut down through political or ideological reasons.”
Edmunds disagrees with North Carolina legislators who complained they were giving money to Hollywood. The incentives provided jobs locally, he said, and film production companies “are like super tourists with a payroll.”
North Carolina’s loss could be Virginia’s gain, said Edmunds. “Virginia is the perfect palette for filmmaking,” he said, plus being closer to Washington, D.C.
Shooting Big Stone Gap in Virginia was a “win-win for everyone—for film production in Virginia and tourism,” said Edmunds. Cast members did two commercials designed to lure tourists to Southwest Virginia. “I think after the movie, people will want to see it,” he said.
But some warn that tourism isn’t a panacea in areas like Wise County, where coal and natural gas dominate the economy—and the environment. “Tourism jobs are low-paying and seasonal,” said Emily Satterwhite, who teaches Appalachian studies at Virginia Tech.
“A tourism campaign may cost us something in understanding the economic and environmental issues in Appalachia,” she said. She pointed to David Baldacci’s movie, Wish You Well, also filmed in Virginia and screening at the Virginia Film Festival, which takes on the coal industry.
“Quilts and dulcimers will only get us so far,” she said, referring to the romanticization of the region in film and books.
Movies like Big Stone Gap, said Satterwhite, evoke a longing in many white Americans of a safe mom-and-pop world, particularly in those who left the region for jobs. “It’s an important book for them because of a pride and a fascination with those roots,” she said. And people from Appalachia or rural America don’t often get to see themselves in film in ways that are positive, she said. Think Deliverance.
Festival director Jody Kielbasa is confident Big Stone Gap will make it to theaters, even though he knows well there’s no guarantee. “We’ve screened lots of films that didn’t have distribution,” he said.
Trigiani remains enthusiastic about Virginia as a place to make movies.
“It has oceans, mountains, the Piedmont, the Shenandoah Valley,” she listed. “It’s completely and utterly cinematic. It’s the U.K. of the U.S. It has a feel of antiquity that’s very rare in the United States. Places are imbued with soul. It’s mystical. There’s a mysticism in the mountains that’s potent.”
Growing up in Big Stone Gap, Trigiani said, everyone went to Charlottesville to see Monticello, sports, and concerts. “It was the big city for us,” she recalled, and that made it the perfect site for Big Stone Gap’s world premiere. “It’s coming full circle,” she said. “I’m very honored.”
Celebration is a big theme for Trigiani, and she points out how the word “play” shows up in “playwright” and “screenplay.” “I’m a court jester here to entertain,” she declared.
And in case Trigiani is hit by a bus before the premiere of her movie, she dictated what she wants C-VILLE to report: “She loved that movie. That movie said it all for her.”