LIVE BY NIGHT REVIEW

If you've read my blog before, you might remember the excitement when Ben Affleck chose our area for his movie LIVE BY NIGHT. We were overjoyed that a real, live movie star would be in our little town filming. My guy and I finally got to see it some weeks back, just before it left the theaters.

I am sad to say it was not good. Not that it was bad. It just wasn't good.

The story seemed fragmented and was hard to follow. I'd read the book by Dennis Lehane--which was engrossing--some years back, but I still had trouble following the movie. Basically, it was about a Boston gangster. He falls in love with his crime boss's daughter, gets beat up, is forced to flee to Florida, builds up his boss's crime empire there... Throw in the Ku Klux Klan, the sheriff's daughter, the black brother-sister Cubans who run the rum trade and...

Oh, my! It's so confusing. Too much is going on. It never really sucked me in.

However, I must say the setting is marvelous! Brunswick, Georgia standing in for Ybor City, Florida is absolutely amazing. The scenery, especially on a road twining through the marshes (which may be from our area?), is breathtaking. And I'm sure some of the local actors/actresses did a great job in their bit parts. Our area did indeed put its best foot forward.

So if you get a chance, see it. Just for the background.

OUR FIFTEEN MINUTES OF FAME

The movie people have wrapped up filming and are out of here, but we locals are still impressed with what they did in the old part of town. They not only brought in old cars and hired locals as extras for the twenties era story, they also packed in dirt to make the town street (in the movie block) look like an old-fashioned dirt road!

Here is a photo of the town. Don't we look like Ybor City, Florida? All the hispanic names on the stores and the spruced up storefronts add to the illusion!

A lot of local actors scored roles. I think this is where they waited for their shot at fame:

I have no names but their costumes were great! They kept walking back and forth in front of where I sat in one of the squares. Don't know if they were going for make-up or snacks or what, but it was exciting to see them. One man claimed he was having such a great time that he'd have paid to be in the movie!

Alas, all is over. Our moment of excitement has come and gone much too quickly.

Thank you, Ben Afflect, for picking us to play a part in Live by Night! It's given a much-needed boost in the economy and let us see how beautiful our town can be when it's all dolled up.

I don't know when it's coming out but it's bound to have a big local audience!

MOVIE

As you may know, Ben Affleck chose our little mainland city as setting for scenes in his new movie based on the novel Live by Night by Dennis Lehane.

The whole county's been agog.

This is an old town. Most of the businesses have moved out to newer shopping centers and outer areas, leaving the core to fall into vacancy and disrepair. To their credit, some farsighted mayors and other people have been sprucing it up. If their efforts continue, they should succeed because the area has a lot to offer, including beautiful Victorian homes and nineteenth century buildings.

But the book's setting is Boston during the twenties. We scratched our heads? We're to stand in for Boston? Does Boston have palm trees? Will we have to disguise them as sugar maples?

Our fears were ungrounded. The movie people want us to look like Ybor City, Florida, where part of the story takes place.

Ybor City? Home of cigars and a blend of Latin cultures?  Okay, even if our area was the southernmost outpost for Anglo-Saxon settlement before the Revolution, we'll take our moment of fame however we can get it. Lucky we have lots of empty buildings and space for the filmmakers to work their magic. And a lot of actors who can impersonate Cubans. Just remember when you go to the theater that we're really not Ybor City. We aren't even in Florida!

 Now, some pix of the sets being built to turn us into...wherever.

This is the area of downtown they're working with. The road is blocked off and you can see a few of the old buildings they're putting new fronts on. Yes! They're actually making them look good!

This was once the old Bluebird Cafe.

The beige building is being worked on, getting ready for make-believe shutters and sign.

And this is an entirely new structure. The lot was empty, the business torn down years ago. So they're putting up the kind of building they want. Or at least the semblance of one.

I hope this set-building/touching-up helps people remember what downtown used to be like. If the movie stirs up interest in restoration, it will be well worth the trouble of rerouted traffic and noisy construction!

Hollywood, welcome to Brunswick!