Hollywood’s Kentucky
I badly wanted to like Cameron Crowe’s “love letter to Kentucky”, Elizabethtown. With nods to Kentucky traditions like Ale-8-1 and Ear-X-Tacy, a My Morning Jacket cameo, and the Versailles footage, it seemed like a sure thing. Like others, I enjoyed it, but I was ultimately disappointed. I wanted an iconic Crowe film like Say Anything! Thankfully, Kentucky escaped the typical Hollywood caricature, but Crowe’s “eccentric Americana” treatment seemed fake too. It was a little surreal to view the film in Hamburg Pavilion, just down the street from where much of Elizabethtown was filmed. Hamburg, a nightmarish maze of big box stores and frustrated shoppers, is the antithesis of the film’s humble, earnest, quirky little town.
Next Up: Glory Road. Glory Road is the story of the ’66 Texas Western team that beat Kentucky in the NCAA tournament. Texas Western was an all black team. Kentucky was all white, and coached by Adolph Rupp. Gulp. This one’s going to be brutal. Actor John Voight recently phoned Rupp’s son to warn him. Rupp said that Voight “didn’t think it’d be a particularly popular film in Kentucky.”