I dimly recall Earl Hammer expressing some disappointment with how his initial story became hollywood-ized into "Spencer's Mountain." He didn't blast the movie -- he expressed gratitude for the film being made -- but the movie is not as true to his story as it could have been. I think he appreciated "The Homecoming" and then "The Waltons" for being closer to his original story.

Beverly -- I think you're right that Spencer's Mountain seemed more western than eastern.

Thanks for all the info on Spencers Mountain. Although one of the things I like about The Waltons is the rural eastern sensibility (and one thing that has been bugging a little bit on rewatch is the California landscape), I think I'll give this a try - it's on my Netflix queue now.

Speaking of the California landscape, when I was in SF for Nillyfest, a group of us drove to wine country. I was amazed at how homelike and familiar it all felt. There is a strong resemblence to the small towns along the Blue Ridge that exist on tourism, crafts, etc., and a resemblence between those landscapes. But the plants are wrong.

If you want southeastern forest with indiginous landscape and plants, watch Last of the Mohicans, or Nell, both filmed in the NC mountains. I really resented the Cold Mountain movie because it obviously was not filmed in NC--I know that country, and made my way through the book landmark by landmark. The film just...didn't. As well as its other problems. Anyway.

Even with the plants being "wrong", or different, the California hills were still just so comfortable and familiar, and I accepted that it was because of the topography.

Heh. One of the cable channels ran a Rifleman 24-hour marathon this weekend (in the first four episodes were Dennis Hopper, Michael Landon and James Drury!), and there, in glorious black and white, was the landscape I absorbed by osmosis week by week, episode by episode of all those tv westerns. Long after they were filmed and broadcast in color, my family still clung to our dependable b&w sets, so all my memories of those shows are in black and white. But there are the childhood memories that make those hills and grassy meadows strewn with olive and other trees as much a part of my memory as my own native landscape.

Beverly, allow me an OMG! moment. When I was stationed at Fort Bragg, I did a lot of hiking out west and in Transylvania County and drove most of the Blue Ridge Parkway. It's how I kept my sanity.

I've been to Chimney Rock State Park (twice), and I was a total geek and raced the whole trail pretending to fire my Invisible!Bow&Arrows against imaginary foes in a race to rescue an imaginary Alice.

What really bugged *me* about Cold Mountain was that they had a bouquet of fall flowers in spring. I thought they were being all clever and subtle about telling us what season it was, when in fact what they were being was wrong.

But not everyone is a plantgeek.

Cold Mountain was filmed in Romania, so my mother refused to see it. I didn't refuse, I just didn't get around to it.

I watched Last of the Mohicans, and laughed my self silly at the huge stands of rhodedendron in what were supposed to be the hills of upstate New York. *grin*

But yeah, once you've lived in California for a while you begin to realize that much of the landscape in television isn't actually at all similar to where the stories are set.

I just wished that the two films/television shows set in New Hampshire were actually filmed in NH and didn't involve evil witchcraft or incest.

I liked the pacific white-sided dolphons swimming in the waters of the north atlantic in Titanic.

I took an elderly scientist friend of mine to Mohicans. I thought he would enjoy the historical aspect, yada yada. What he ended up doing was enjoying whinging about how wrongwrongwrong nearly everything was.

One fun thing was him taking me outside with broom handles and proving exactly why the native fighters would and could not have carried long guns running through the forest.

Hee.