Aerial.America.S04E07.Beyond.Hollywood
Aerial.America.S04E07.Beyond.Hollywood
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00:00From spacious skies to the silver screen, America is one big movie set.
00:10In the Pacific, the land where dinosaurs come back to life.
00:15In the Atlantic, the beach 007 loves.
00:19In between are dusty towns that emerge out of nowhere, and research fields tailor-made
00:26for science fiction.
00:28Hollywood finds some of its most incredible landscapes in real life.
00:34These are the unexpected stars of Tinseltown, places that have gained fame around the world,
00:43thanks to the movies.
00:44Thanks for watching.
01:13It's one of the world's most recognizable cities, home base to Batman, Spider-Man, and
01:26the Fantastic Four.
01:29Wiped out in Planet of the Apes, frozen in The Day After Tomorrow, and abandoned in I
01:37Am Legend.
01:41There's something about New York City that Hollywood can't resist.
01:46It's only fitting that people got their first glimpses of motion pictures here in 1894 with
01:52a contraption called the Kinetoscope.
01:55In the decades that followed, New York served as the setting for films ranging from Midnight
02:00Cowboy to Taxi Driver to Wall Street.
02:05And many New York landmarks are synonymous with movies themselves.
02:13The Empire State Building became the romantic rendezvous point after the 1957 film An Affair
02:20to Remember, which later inspired Nora Ephron to write Sleepless in Seattle.
02:27The building didn't fare as well in the sci-fi disaster movie Independence Day, when aliens
02:32annihilated it, along with the rest of New York.
02:38Long before those movies, it starred in the groundbreaking 1933 film King Kong.
02:46Director Marion Cooper wanted the ape to scale the world's tallest building.
02:50But at the time, that kept changing.
02:54For a while, Cooper had the gorilla climbing the Chrysler Building.
03:00It held the tallest skyscraper title for less than a year, but its architecture has
03:05made it a filmmaker's favorite for decades.
03:08Spider-Man, played by Tobey Maguire, mourns his uncle's death on its rooftop.
03:14And the Fantastic Four's Human Torch speeds around it in the 2007 movie Rise of the Silver
03:19Surfer.
03:23It's also one of the few Midtown buildings to survive in the Marvel superhero smash-up
03:28The Avengers.
03:29But one New York landmark seems to get demolished more than the rest.
03:35Lady Liberty.
03:36She's beheaded in Cloverfield, frozen in The Day After Tomorrow, flooded in Artificial
03:43Intelligence, and manhandled repeatedly in superhero movies.
03:49But her standout role may be bringing Charlton Heston to his knees when he realizes the planet
03:54of the apes is actually post-apocalyptic Earth.
04:00The Statue of Liberty's appearances aren't all doom and gloom.
04:04Daryl Hanna creates a sensation walking onto Liberty Island nude in the 1984 movie Splash.
04:11And in Men in Black 2, the statue's torch comes in handy when Agent K, played by Tommy
04:17Lee Jones, uses it to erase New Yorkers' memories of aliens who invaded the city.
04:24Just northeast of the statue is another Hollywood hotspot, the Manhattan Bridge.
04:33It takes a beating in the final installment of the Batman trilogy when the villain Bane
04:37destroys real and fictional bridges up and down the river.
04:42The bridge is part of the fictional Gotham City, a 19th century nickname for New York.
04:51Batman co-creator Bill Finger said he chose the name so people anywhere could identify
04:56with the stories.
04:59One of the most iconic images of the bridge appears in Sergio Leone's 1984 mobster classic
05:05Once Upon a Time in America with Robert De Niro.
05:09The shot of it towering over Brooklyn warehouses became the image used in the movie's poster
05:13art.
05:18Not to be outdone, the neighboring Brooklyn Bridge stole the show and a sizable chunk
05:23of the budget in the 2007 sci-fi thriller I Am Legend.
05:32Will Smith races here to evacuate his family from a rapidly spreading virus, only to see
05:37their chopper crash when the military blows up the bridge.
05:42Each of the scenes was filmed on location over six nights and at a cost of $5 million.
05:48At the time, the largest amount spent on a single scene.
05:53The filmmakers had to meet requirements from 14 government agencies and hire 1,000 extras,
05:59including 160 National Guard members.
06:03The bridge gets far gentler treatment by Brooklyn native Woody Allen, who features it in his
06:07Oscar-winning love story Annie Hall, among other films.
06:12But more often than not, Allen's lovelorn characters find their way to one of his favorite
06:17filming spots, Central Park.
06:21Allen shot scenes for one of his first movies, Take the Money and Run, here, and came back
06:25over the decades for Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and many more.
06:31The prolific filmmaker has occasionally shot places aside from New York, citing the high
06:36filming costs of the Big Apple.
06:38But inevitably, he returns.
06:41As Allen writes in Manhattan, New York was his town, and it always would be.
06:52West of the park is an apartment building that's seen its share of celebrity and tragedy.
06:57The Dakota was the real-life home of Lauren Bacall, Gilda Radner, and Judy Garland.
07:04John Lennon lived here from 1973 until 1980, when he was killed just outside.
07:10His widow, Yoko Ono, still owns apartments here, and marks Lennon's death every year
07:15by putting a candle in her window.
07:18But the gothic gabled building may be most recognized for its role as the Bramford, the
07:24building Rosemary and Guy move into in the chilling film, Rosemary's Baby.
07:34Down the New Jersey turnpike is another more unexpected Hollywood haunt, Philadelphia.
07:42This is director M. Night Shyamalan's longtime hometown, and preferred movie set.
07:48He filmed The Sixth Sense, Signs, and The Village here, though it's tough to tell.
07:55Shyamalan leaves out major landmarks to keep the location vague, perhaps so moviegoers
08:00will think his creepy characters could live in any city, including theirs.
08:09Other directors are drawn to downtown Philly for this oddly-shaped prison.
08:13Built in 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary was once the world's most famous and expensive
08:19prison.
08:21Its unique star shape was part of prison reform, the idea being that long, narrow cell blocks
08:28would give guards better views of inmates.
08:32Al Capone and bank robber Willie Sutton spent time here, as did Bruce Willis in the 1995
08:39sci-fi film, Twelve Monkeys.
08:42The prison, which is now a museum, became an insane asylum in the movie.
08:48It also serves as a hideout for actors Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, the stars of Transformers
08:542, who come here to escape the evil Decepticons.
09:01A few blocks away from Eastern State is a landmark known for a very human hero.
09:07A down-on-his-luck boxer comes here to the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to
09:12train for the fight of his life.
09:15His name was Rocky Balboa.
09:19The movie, like its main character, was an underdog.
09:23With a budget of $1 million, the director filmed it in just 28 days.
09:28It went on to gross millions and win three Oscars.
09:33Three decades later, fans still visit the museum just to climb the same stairs Stallone
09:38did in 1976.
09:43Hollywood has also come to Pennsylvania to film on what was once a piece of farmland,
09:48and now is a part of history.
09:51This is where Civil War buff and media mogul Ted Turner shot his 1993 epic, Gettysburg,
09:57the first motion picture ever allowed to film on the battlefield.
10:06Thousands of reenactors traveled here to be part of the film, which recounted General
10:10Robert E. Lee's second attempt at invading the North.
10:18Lee made his move in June 1863, splitting his men and sending them north into Pennsylvania,
10:25but Union forces, acting as a buffer between Lee's army and the Capitol, were right behind
10:30them.
10:33On July 1st, the battle at Gettysburg began.
10:38Actors, including Turner himself as an extra in the film, recreated the pivotal battle
10:46scenes, including ones at the boulder-covered Devil's Den and Little Round Top.
10:56At just over four hours, the movie was so long, theaters could only show it a few times
11:01a day.
11:05It didn't do well at the box office, but became one of the best-selling videos and DVDs of
11:10all time.
11:16More than 1,100 miles away, a far different landscape for a far different movie, Miami
11:23serves as the home of Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, the movie that launched Jim Carrey into stardom.
11:31Part of the 2006 James Bond film, Casino Royale, centers around Miami, but was shot elsewhere.
11:39007 does frequent Miami's neighboring city, Miami Beach.
11:44The 1964 movie Goldfinger features the gorgeous coastline and, of course, the buxom Bond women.
11:52The next year, Bond saves the city from an atomic bomb in Thunderball.
11:57Just off Miami Beach is the aptly named Star Island, a man-made island that's been home
12:04to many celebrities over the years.
12:07Gloria Estefan owns this Spanish-style mansion, where her entry room boasts his and hers bathrooms.
12:13The ladies even has extra stalls.
12:18A few doors down from her, the almost home of Tony Montana, a.k.a. Scarface.
12:26In the cult classic, Montana, played by Al Pacino, is a Cuban immigrant turned violent
12:31coke smuggler.
12:34As filming got underway, Cuban-Americans protested, claiming Pacino's character stereotyped
12:40Cubans in America.
12:41The producers had to pull the plug and shoot the rest of the film in and around Los Angeles.
12:48A few hours south of Star Island is a Florida bridge that's seen its share of stunts.
12:54The now-defunct Overseas Highway appears in Fast and Furious 2 and James Bond License
13:01to Kill.
13:02It's probably most recognizable for its role in True Lies, when Arnold Schwarzenegger,
13:07hanging out of a helicopter, rescues Jamie Lee Curtis.
13:13He pulls her to safety just as her limo plunges into the abyss.
13:20On the West Coast, a home in the hills of San Simeon State Park inspired what many say
13:25is the best film of all time, Citizen Kane.
13:30New people have been as influential in Hollywood as the man who owned this land, William Randolph
13:35Hearst.
13:38The son of a wealthy mine owner, Hearst grew up camping on the thousands of acres his family
13:42owned here.
13:45When he inherited the land, Hearst told architect Julia Morgan he'd like to build a little something.
13:54Hearst was the Rupert Murdoch of his day.
13:58He extended his influence to Hollywood, where he became a powerful movie mogul, entertaining
14:03stars and politicians alike.
14:10Guests such as Winston Churchill and Calvin Coolidge visited the 165-room home, which
14:17Hearst modeled after a Spanish cathedral.
14:28Hearst's own private quarters, which he shared with his longtime girlfriend, actress Marion
14:32Davies, sat between the two towers overlooking the Pacific.
14:41The white marble pool is so grand it was used in the 1960 epic Spartacus as Laurence
14:47Olivier's villa.
14:55Hollywood director Orson Welles found Hearst and his castle an irresistible target.
15:02Welles' 1941 film Citizen Kane was set at a palace called Xanadu, where a newspaper
15:08magnate lives with his increasingly unhappy second wife.
15:13Hearst retaliated by nearly ruining Welles' career.
15:19Six years after Hearst's death in 1951, his family donated the castle to the state of
15:25California, where thousands of tourists visit it each year.
15:39Up the California coast is a landmark with a long movie career, the Golden Gate Bridge.
15:47Magneto moves it in the Marvel Comics movie X-Men The Last Stand, and in the 2009 movie
15:53Star Trek, Starfleet Academy sits in its shadow.
16:02But many would say the bridge's most memorable role is in the Alfred Hitchcock classic Vertigo,
16:07where it looms over James Stewart as he rescues Kim Novak from her plunge into the water.
16:14Hitchcock made San Francisco and its dizzying heights an essential part of the movie, choosing
16:20the dauntingly steep and crooked Lombard Street for Stewart's apartment building, where
16:24it still stands today.
16:37Nearby in the San Francisco Bay sits Alcatraz, the setting for the 1979 movie Escape from
16:44Alcatraz, starring Clint Eastwood.
16:51The film was based on the remarkable true story of Frank Morris, a bank robber who ended
16:55up here because of his penchant for escaping.
17:02The rock didn't change him.
17:10For months, Morris and his cohorts plotted how to make it across the surrounding water,
17:15ultimately building a raft out of raincoats.
17:21On the night of June 11, 1962, he escaped with two others through tunnels they'd dug
17:26with spoons.
17:29They were never heard from again.
17:32During filming, Eastwood apparently performed the final stunt, going down the prison wall
17:38and plunging into the water himself.
17:42Two different times, the director feared his star had been lost in the treacherous current.
17:49Seventeen years later, Alcatraz starred with Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery in The Rock,
17:55in which the island is taken over by a bitter marine general who aims warheads at the city.
18:04To keep costs down, the studio wanted much of the filming done in L.A., but director
18:08Michael Bay insisted on using the real thing.
18:15One drawback, the island had become a national park, so Bay had to film with tourists wandering
18:21around.
18:26From California to Colorado, where an Estes Park hotel attracts tourists not just for
18:33its digs, but also its history in horror.
18:39In September 1974, author Stephen King and his wife checked into the Stanley Hotel, where
18:45they were the only guests before it shut down for the winter.
18:53In this room, number 217, King dreamt of his three-year-old son running through the halls,
19:02When King woke up, he came up with the idea for The Shining, which was adapted into the
19:10Stanley Kubrick classic.
19:14In the book, King turns the Stanley into a fictional hotel named The Overlook.
19:23But Kubrick chose not to film here, instead opting for the exteriors of the Timberline
19:28Lodge in northern Oregon.
19:34The Stanley did make the final cut of a far different movie, the 1994 comedy Dumb and
19:40Dumber.
19:42In it, the hotel becomes the swanky place Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels stay in Aspen.
19:50Another famous comedian was scouting in Colorado when he came across an odd structure in the
19:55Denver foothills.
19:59This is known as the Sculptured House, and it was what Woody Allen needed for his 70s
20:04sci-fi parody Sleeper, in which a health food store owner discovers he's been cryogenically
20:10frozen for 200 years.
20:14The movie was a big success, the house, not so much.
20:20Architect Charles Deaton, who also designed Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, built the
20:24home in the 60s, but never finished the interior.
20:29It sat vacant for three decades, until a software millionaire restored and sold it in 2002.
20:35But the new owner faced foreclosure.
20:39It sold at auction in 2010 for $1.5 million.
20:53In southwest Colorado, one town became legendary for its role in history and Hollywood, Telluride.
21:06Butch Cassidy robbed his first bank here before becoming a notorious outlaw.
21:13And in the 60s, this nearby canyon hosted the stars of the beloved western Butch Cassidy
21:18and the Sundance Kid.
21:22It was here that Paul Newman and Robert Redford robbed the Durango and Silverton Railway,
21:28which today carries tourists and history buffs.
21:33In Butch Cassidy's time, he had hauled gold and silver ore out of Colorado's Mineral Belt.
21:38Redford and Newman stopped the train and tried to blow open its safe, but end up destroying
21:43the entire mail car instead.
21:47The money thereafter rains down on them, as it did on the stars afterwards.
21:53The movie won four Academy Awards, and Redford named his annual film festival and ski resort
21:59after his character.
22:06Another western town inspired one of the longest-running series in television history, Gunsmoke.
22:13This is Dodge City, Kansas, a rough and tumble town of the Old West.
22:18These modern storefronts depict the 1800s town that serves as the setting for dozens
22:22of westerns.
22:24Despite the life-size recreations, Dodge rarely makes the cut.
22:29The westerns depicted here are all shot someplace else.
22:33But Hollywood can't change history.
22:38These were the streets where Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson took on outlaws, some of whom
22:44ended up in the legendary Boot Hill Cemetery.
22:49The rest hightailed it straight out of Dodge.
22:55In the Nevada desert sits a town long known for its sins, Las Vegas, the setting for one
23:02of Hollywood's most critically acclaimed movies, Leaving Las Vegas.
23:07Nicolas Cage turned down Dumb and Dumber with Jim Carrey to take the lead role, in which
23:11he plays a suicidal alcoholic.
23:14He won an Oscar for the performance.
23:20Vegas has a history full of colorful characters.
23:24The 1991 movie Bugsy, with Warren Beatty, was based on the real Bugsy Siegel, who built
23:30the Flamingo Hotel and Casino on what was then a scrappy stretch of Highway 91.
23:39Siegel spent six million dollars turning it into a pleasure palace.
23:43But shortly after it started making money, Bugsy was dead, shot in the head reading the
23:49newspaper.
23:51Some say the killers were his own associates who suspected him of skimming profits.
23:58The Flamingo proved fortunes could be made in this desert valley.
24:03And then, the mob money flowed.
24:09Casinos rose, and Highway 91 became the Vegas Strip.
24:14Since then, this stretch has seen more stars than Bugsy could imagine, from Tom Cruise
24:19and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, to Mike Myers in Austin Powers.
24:26The world-famous Bellagio and its waterworks star in what some consider the ultimate Vegas
24:32movie, Ocean's Eleven.
24:37Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and their motley crew target a fictional vault at the Bellagio
24:42that holds its profits along with those of the Mirage and the MGM Grand.
24:50The heist is set for the night of a heavyweight fight at the MGM.
24:55An extra $150 million will be in the vault to cover bets.
24:59Clooney and company pull it off and get two more Ocean's movies to boot.
25:14Some incredible scenery in southern Nevada keeps Hollywood coming back to the Valley
25:19of Fire.
25:29These were sand dunes 150 million years ago, in the age of the dinosaurs.
25:35Erosion and the shifting earth created the formations, which now make up a 42,000-acre
25:41state park.
25:47Autobots drive by this valley in Transformers, and Captain Kirk dies here in Star Trek Generations.
25:55In Total Recall with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the valley plays the part of Mars.
26:03In Louisiana, a love affair has blossomed between Brad Pitt and the city of New Orleans.
26:11Since Hurricane Katrina, Pitt and other stars have brought so much movie business to the
26:15Big Easy, it's now called Hollywood South.
26:20A generous tax credit has helped. Ten years ago, Louisiana hosted one or two productions
26:25a year. Now, it averages 45.
26:30In the 2008 movie, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Pitt, the main character
26:38lives here, in the city's opulent Garden District, where he starts aging backwards.
26:46This area was also home to author Anne Rice, who lived in this 47,000-square-foot Italian-style
26:55mansion, originally built as a boarding school in 1865.
27:03Rice's best-selling book, The Vampire Chronicles, became the goth movie, Interview with a Vampire,
27:09starring Tom Cruise and, once again, Brad Pitt.
27:15Scenes of that movie were filmed just up the Mississippi, at a Louisiana plantation
27:19called the Oak Alley Mansion. Three hundred-year-old oaks lead to the Grand House, built by a sugar
27:26baron in the 1830s.
27:30It also appears in the movie Primary Colors, where John Travolta plays a womanizing presidential
27:36candidate.
27:40Another former Louisiana plantation serves a far different movie genre.
27:47This is Angola, the largest maximum-security prison in the U.S.
27:53Known as The Farm, Angola has been part of some of Hollywood's most powerful prison movies.
28:04Angola's vast fields of soybeans, corn and cotton appear in Monster's Ball, starring
28:10Halle Berry, a role that led her to becoming the first African-American woman to win an
28:14Oscar for Best Actress.
28:20And it was this cellblock, Angola's former death row, that inspired Stephen King to write
28:26The Green Mile, later adapted into a movie starring Tom Hanks.
28:33The prison built the cellblock in the 30s to house escape risks and death row inmates
28:38who were executed next door.
28:47Decades later, on Angola's modern-day death row, Catholic nun Sister Helen Prejean counseled
28:54inmates facing execution, which inspired her to write Dead Man Walking.
29:02After reading the book, Susan Sarandon pushed for it to become a movie and won an Oscar
29:09for her starring role.
29:13In the nearby state of Alabama, a small coastal town gained notoriety thanks to a fictional
29:19southerner named Forrest Gump.
29:22In the movie, Gump, played famously by Tom Hanks, moves to Bayou La Batre to start a
29:28shrimping business that becomes wildly successful.
29:35This is, after all, the seafood capital of Alabama.
29:44La Batre is also known for its shipbuilding.
29:48In 2005, Disney secretly built and launched a 130-foot pirate ship here for the sequel
29:55to Pirates of the Caribbean.
29:59Far from Alabama and thousands of miles off the continental U.S. are islands that draw
30:04directors for many reasons.
30:08On Oahu, modern-day naval vessels became World War II ones in the 2001 movie Pearl Harbor,
30:15starring Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale.
30:19Numerous ships, including the battleship USS Missouri and frigate Whipple, stood for the
30:24actual ones attacked and sunk that fateful December day.
30:31More than 2,400 Americans died when the Japanese bombed the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
30:38During the movie's production, the cast and crew paid tribute to the fallen servicemen
30:43in a special ceremony at the Arizona Memorial.
30:54Hollywood recently celebrated the undisturbed beauty of the nearby island of Kauai in the
30:592011 drama The Descendants, starring George Clooney.
31:06In it, Clooney is entrusted with protecting his family's pristine land, which actually
31:11is private property on the island's southeastern side.
31:15The movie is based on the book by Cowie Hart Hemmings, who spent childhood vacations on
31:20the island's north shore, which also stood in as the South Pacific in the 1976 remake
31:34of King Kong.
31:37Steven Spielberg shot the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark here, and came back
31:42more than a decade later to film Jurassic Park.
31:51This 280-foot waterfall, which sits on private property in central Kauai, appears as scientists
31:57arrive at the dinosaur theme park.
32:04Locals now simply call it Jurassic Falls.
32:11During filming, a hurricane hit Kauai, halting production.
32:17But according to one report, Spielberg seized the opportunity, shooting the actual storm
32:22to portray part of his fictional one.
32:28Surfing is an integral part of Hawaii's history, so it only made sense for Hollywood to head
32:33here for the surfer flick Blue Crush.
32:39Two of the world's best surfing spots are off Oahu, Waikiki and the North Shore, home
32:44of the famous Bonsai Pipeline.
32:49Oahu was also home to the 1980s TV character Magnum P.I., and the setting for the original
32:56long-running Hawaii Five-0.
33:06Decades later, Adam Sandler filmed his comedies Punch-Drunk Love and 50 First Dates here.
33:13But long before Sandler made it big, he was inspired by another movie.
33:19Eugene, Oregon, home to the University of Oregon. Its claim to fame? Animal House.
33:26The filmmakers were having trouble finding a college that would cooperate with their
33:29raunchy script. Then they called William Beattie Boyd, U of O's president. Boyd had turned
33:36down the graduate at his last university and didn't want to make the same mistake twice.
33:44Parts of the movie were filmed here, with this fraternity standing in as the pretentious
33:49Omega House, where incoming freshman Kent Dorfman and Larry Kroger are called a wimp
33:55and a blimp, then join Delta House instead.
34:03On the Oregon coast, another group of friends came here, to Haystack Rock, to start their
34:10hunt for treasure. They called themselves the Goonies. The 1985 cult classic is about
34:16a group of kids from Astoria, Oregon, where much of the movie was filmed. Among the stars,
34:22a very young Josh Brolin, whose more recent films include True Grit and No Country for
34:28Old Men. Twenty-three miles up the coast sits a 20th century shipwreck that made its
34:35way to the post-apocalyptic film, The Road. In the Viggo Mortensen film, a father and
34:43son come across the wreckage of the Peter Iredale as they head south, trying to survive.
34:51The four-masted vessel ran aground one stormy day in 1906, en route to the treacherous entrance
34:57to the Columbia River, known as the Graveyard of the Pacific. Beneath the calm-looking waters,
35:07river currents clash with fierce incoming ocean swells, causing conditions that can
35:12deceive even the most experienced captains. Over the years, 2,000 ships have gone down
35:19here. In neighboring Washington State, directors often gravitate to Seattle, and one of its
35:28trademarks, the Space Needle. Elvis Presley came here to film the 1963 movie It Happened
35:35at the World's Fair, and Dr. Evil made the Needle his headquarters in the 1999 film,
35:43Austin Powers, The Spy Who Shagged Me. But many remember it in the romantic comedy, Sleepless
35:49in Seattle, with Tom Hanks. His character lived nearby, in this houseboat community.
35:56The history of these homes goes back to the 1800s, when they weren't much more than floating
36:01shacks, built to house timber workers. In the early 1900s, the city of Seattle was
36:07much more than floating shacks, built to house timber workers. Today, movie buffs seek
36:14out this unusual neighborhood, and note that the Sleepless in Seattle house was listed
36:21for $2.5 million in 2008. In the Washington wilderness, a tiny logging town shot to stardom
36:29thanks to some teenage vampires. This is Forks, Washington, population 3,500, and the setting
36:38for the wildly popular Twilight books and movies. In them, a teenage girl named Bella
36:44falls for her vampire classmate, who then tries to protect her from a coven of evil
36:49vampires. The film wasn't shot in Forks, nor has it been made into a feature film.
36:56The film wasn't shot in Forks, nor had author Stephanie Meyer even been here when she wrote
37:01the first book. But a quick internet search told her it was the rainiest city in the U.S.,
37:06and Meyer figured vampires would want some cloud cover. Now, fans flock here, boosting
37:13tourism by 400% in 2009. Most residents welcome the deluge, and even have a Stephanie Meyer
37:22Day to celebrate all things Twilight. Vampires take center stage in the South, too. This
37:35is Longwood Plantation in Natchez, Mississippi, and the home of a dangerous vampire king in
37:41the acclaimed HBO series True Blood.
37:51The house was built in 1860 by a wealthy cotton planter named Hollard Nutt. He planned a 32-room
37:59mansion, but the next year, the Civil War broke out, and the workers fled. Three years
38:05later, Nutt died of pneumonia. The interior was never completed, and the house earned
38:13the nickname Nutt's Folly. It's now an historic landmark.
38:19A historic landmark in Michigan brought together an unlikely pair, Superman and Dr. Quinn,
38:27Medicine Woman. The Grand Hotel opened on Mackinac Island in 1887. But Hollywood set
38:35up shop here to film the 1980s sci-fi romance Somewhere in Time, starring Christopher Robin
38:43Reeve and Jane Seymour. In it, Reeve is a hotel guest so entranced by a photo of Seymour
38:49that he travels back in time to meet her. Despite Reeve's recent stardom as Superman
38:55and Seymour's as a Bond girl, the movie didn't do well at first. Years later, it became a
39:04cult classic. Today, the hotel hosts a Somewhere in Time weekend every year. But science fiction
39:12is perhaps more at home about 1,700 miles away, in the New Mexico desert.
39:19Here, miles from civilization, sits a massive radar dish, 82 feet wide, weighing 230 tons.
39:29Scientists put it here in the 70s to listen for faint signals from outer space.
39:37The radar dish is the largest in the world. It's the largest in the world.
39:44But they weren't looking for E.T. The scientists are radio astronomers, who study celestial
39:50objects that emit radio waves. To reach deep into space, they knew one dish wouldn't be
39:58enough. So they built 27 of them. They act in concert.
40:05And are tuned by moving them relative to each other on stretches of railroad tracks.
40:11They are called the Very Large Array, or VLA. It appears in the opening of the sci-fi movie
40:192010, the sequel to 2001, A Space Odyssey.
40:25It also plays an integral part in the Jodie Foster film, Contact, in which Foster plays
40:31a scientist who works here, and makes first contact with an alien species. The first weeks
40:37of filming took place here, with Foster sitting alone in the midst of this most unusual observatory,
40:43hearing the first signals of something extraordinary.
40:49But shooting that scene was tricky, since this is a working government facility.
40:55The filmmakers needed to rearrange the dishes, and choreograph their rotation.
41:01They went through months of arduous planning and negotiations to get the shots they needed
41:07without interfering with the VLA's day-to-day operations.
41:13The Array recently underwent a major upgrade that's made it far more sensitive, able, in theory,
41:19to detect something as weak as a cell phone call from Jupiter.
41:25Aliens and the Old West don't usually mix.
41:31But at Bonanza Creek Ranch outside Santa Fe, anything can happen.
41:37The land made its first movie appearance in 1955, and hasn't stopped since.
41:43It's now an all-inclusive film location, with five ponds, two sets, and one movie town.
41:49Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde came here to film the 2011 sci-fi western, Cowboys and Aliens.
41:59In it, a spaceship arrives, and it's the first time in the history of science fiction that
42:05In it, a spaceship arrives to take over Earth, starting with the Wild West.
42:13Luckily, the aliens don't stand a chance against Craig and Harrison Ford.
42:19A short gallop away is another Hollywood hangout.
42:25A ranch owned by director and famed fashion designer, Tom Ford.
42:31Director Kenneth Branagh came here to film his 2011 movie, Thor, starring Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth.
42:41The filmmakers added on to an existing movie set to build the fictional town of Puente Antigo,
42:47where Thor has his final showdown with a creature called the Destroyer,
42:53formerly known as the Cook Movie Ranch.
42:59This was also a filming location for the remake of 310 to Yuma.
43:05Two decades earlier, Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones came here to shoot the highly acclaimed miniseries, Lonesome Dove,
43:11based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book.
43:17But it's the undisturbed landscape of the Valles Caldera National Preserve
43:23that makes it one of the Wild West's most enduring heroes, the Lone Ranger.
43:29The 2013 movie filmed here features Armie Hammer, of social network fame, as the lead,
43:35and Johnny Depp as Tonto.
43:41This 89,000 acre property actually sits inside a collapsed crater in the volcanic Jemez Mountain Range.
43:47It also served as the main homestead in the 2003 Ron Howard film, The Missing,
43:53starring Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones.
43:59For decades, it was a privately owned ranch until it became a National Preserve in 2000.
44:05When Hollywood isn't here, the real star in Valles Caldera is nature itself.
44:21Another beautiful part of New Mexico has been in the movie business since the silent film era.
44:27This is the other Las Vegas, founded 70 years before Nevada's.
44:33The Coen brothers filmed their four-time Oscar winner, No Country for Old Men, here,
44:39using Vegas as a stand-in for two border towns.
44:45And in 2010, the Los Angeles Times,
44:51and in 2010, Robert Downey Jr.
44:57and Zach Galifianakis shot the comedy, Due Date, here.
45:03Another famous duo roared through town decades earlier,
45:09Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, in the 60s counterculture movie, Easy Rider.
45:15It seems, no matter where you are in America,
45:21there's a story to tell, whether real or imagined.
45:27From the first silent movies shown in New York,
45:33to the bloody battles that defined the country,
45:39to the castle that inspired a masterpiece,
45:45Hollywood will keep coming back to these cities and towns,
45:51these coastlines and countrysides, to tell us stories we'll only see at the movies.