I’m not sure I agree with John Denver, that West Virginia is almost heaven, but it is a good location for filming a sci-fi movie, specifically Weirton, WV. The movie was Super 8, an adolescent come of age, with a little B-Movie zombie action and a very misunderstood alien.
It’s a really fun movie to watch. When it came out in June 2011, I went to see it a couple of times in the theater and then when the DVD was released, I got that, too. Bobby enjoyed the movie, as well.
Weirton is not very far from Wooster, Ohio. I decided I would surprise Bobby for a day trip to Weirton to see some of the locations where they filmed portions of the film. We saw the steel mill, the cemetery, the housing development and one of the restaurants where a scene between the son, Joe, and the dad, Jack took place.
I would suggest that if you ever plan to do a trip to a town where a movie was filmed, for the specific purpose to see the locations, you plot the trip out better than I did. We ended up going from one site to another, but without a plan. We went from one side of town to see one location, then up a “hill” which was more like a mountain, to see another site. Then down the hill to another site near where we were earlier. It was hot that day and I was freaking out that we would overheat the van we had at the time. (Believe me, you don’t want to see me when it is hot and I don’t have air conditioning!)
It all worked out, though. We enjoyed the trip, remembering where the scenes were in the movie. The drive was beautiful. And West Virginia is pretty close to heaven–at least in altitude!
Even though this trip was taken almost 5 years ago, it still brings back great memories. If you wonder what as stirred all this up, I’ll tell you. A friend of ours, Adam Granger, posted on Facebook today that the Weirton steel mill is closing. While I am sad to hear about this and wonder the impact to the town, I will always think of Weirton as the town where I got to immerse myself in an actual movie. If only in my imagination. Oh yeah, Bobby created a YouTube video of it as well. You can check it out here.
