Last Splash

Monday, 19 February 2007

You know what really gets me?

I watched the movie Message in the Bottle last night, which I borrowed from my dad's extensive DVD collection of John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, and Kevin Costner movies (I know, where does that fit in?) It stuck out like a sore thumb, but he insisted he really thought it was a great movie, and he had two copies anyway, so I took it home. Really, if you knew my dad, you'd be thinking "Nicholas Sparks???!!! Really?!" But, I guess I could see how he liked it. He's a boater himself, although not a sailor, and spent part of his formative years in one of those very small coastal Carolina communities. He's gruff and Southern like Kevin Costner's character in the movie. And he really is a conundrum in and of itself. I mean, this is a man that has done all of the following: converted part of the detached garage at his house into a "man" room used solely for grilling, watching old war movies, and smoking; spent about 12 of the last 24 months in Taiwan; eaten Sushi in Japan; sung karaoke in Australia; gotten drunk in the infield at a Nascar game; erected an honorary 9/11 flagpole in my mother's flower bed made of PVC pipe and tied to the house with boating rope. So, all things considered, I don't know why ANYthing he does surprises me anymore.

Former point aside, what really pissed me off during the movie was that it was filmed mostly in a coastal community that was very obviously somewhere on the left coast. Now, there is a very big difference in the two coasts, and as lovely as my feelings towards NoCal are after my honeymoon, I am and always will be an East Coast girl. It's in my blood. And I cannot understand how anyone could look at the beach scenes in that movie and think NC beaches look ANYTHING like that! Our beaches are not cold, or misty, or mountainous. Our lighthouses are tall and obtrusive, and our water is more emerald green that dark and mysterious. There is not a speck of black lava rock anywhere on a NC beach. And as famous as the Outer Banks are, you would have thought the movie's producers would have been OK filming there. I mean, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger used to own a HOUSE there! People from the midwest go to the Outer Banks all the time! What's wrong with us? We were good enough for fourty seasons of Dawson's Creek, for goodness sake, even though that was set in MA. How come we're not good enough for a book actually set in NC and written by one of our (fairly decent but a little too sappy and conventional) native authors? Shame on Nicholas Sparks for not insisting on that. But, then again, a man that allows ALL of his books to be made into movies probably isn't too concerned with authenticity.