Published: July 15, 2008 05:45 pm      

Can W.Va. be portrayed positively in the movies? Some want to believe ...

Could there be another black eye in West Virginia’s future courtesy of our friends in Hollywood?

After reading about an upcoming movie that I was (and am still) looking forward to seeing — “The X-Files: I want to Believe” — I came across an unsettling comment. A producer quoted in the magazine article I was reading said the movie was shot in Vancouver, but said the majority of the movie is set in a West Virginia country side. I thought to myself, “This can’t be good.” A movie about flying saucers, an alien form of deadly black oil and a vast government conspiracy set almost entirely in West Virginia?

But, to be fair, the latest movie update of the popular television series that ran for more than nine years on the Fox network is said to be a stand-alone, monster-of-the-week type story. Maybe a Mothman or something, but we are being told none of the aliens or black oil from the television series will be featured. They are trying to reach a wider audience who may not have watched the original television show. Still, the movie trailer shows a man with blood dripping out of his eyes, lights in the skies (they said no aliens didn’t they?) and other generally strange stuff.

Hopefully, West Virginia won’t take too bad of a beating on this one. We’ll just have to wait and see. I seem to remember that West Virginia was used frequently back in the original television series. If memory serves me correctly, the aliens and the government conspirators had some connection with the Mountain State during the nine-year run of the original television series.

But if West Virginia does end up looking bad in the new movie, it won’t be the first time.

First there was that silly slasher flick “Wrong Turn,” which was set in the mountains of West Virginia and included the reference to Bluefield State College. In case you haven’t heard about it, it was a movie about in-bred family members living deep in the mountains of West Virginia who kidnap and do generally bad things to a bunch of college students. Basically not a very good movie. Hollywood even made a sequel to “Wrong Turn.” I haven’t seen part two.

We also had to contend with that “It’s all relative in West Virginia” T-shirt from the good folks with Abercrombie & Fitch who were apparently trying to make a not-too-funny joke about the Mountain State. Then of course we had the vice president make another unfunny joke about West Virginia just a few weeks ago. It seems like we can’t win for losing.

The general misunderstanding of the Mountain State is a problem we’ve been dealing with for years. It is quite frustrating. We even face this problem from time to time with the national media. All too often a reporter will come to town from a city far away, spend a day or two in West Virginia (usually southern West Virginia), and then suddenly become an expert on all things related to our region. Then they will normally write an extremely negative article about the area. I’ve seen it happen too many times before.

Of course we also had the visit to Bluefield last fall by Dr. Phil McGraw. The visit from the television celebrity generated some controversy. But the end product of his visit was so short — literally just a couple of minutes — that it was hard to say whether it was actually good or bad. The Wade Center got some good publicity, but that was about all we saw of Bluefield.

West Virginia got a decent if not highly unrealistic plug in last summer’s “Live Free and Die Hard.” The old “Welcome to West Virginia: Open for Business” sign was prominently displayed during a section of the movie that led to an explosive battle between Bruce Willis and a bunch of terrorists in a fictional West Virginia town. It’s been a while since I saw the movie. All I can really remember is a big explosion, and lots of gunfire.

Now it’s apparently up to Agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully to give West Virginia a good plug on the big screen. Will they make us look good, or slam us like so many earlier Hollywood efforts? The movie will be released in two weeks, so we will find out soon. It’s too bad that 20th Century Fox didn’t actually come to West Virginia to film the movie. What does Vancouver have in common with West Virginia anyhow?

I, too, want to believe. I want to believe that Hollywood can finally portray the Mountain State correctly. They did it very well and respectfully once with the 1999 motion picture “October Sky.” The big-screen version of the true story of the Rocket Boys of McDowell County was one for the ages. It was a fair and enjoyable portrayal of the Mountain State. Maybe we won’t get another good movie about West Virginia until “October Sky 2” is filmed.

Charles Owens is the Daily Telegraph’s city editor. Contact him at cowens@bdtonline.com