BY MARGARET A. McGURK
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The loss of the Beloved project to Philadelphia came as a blow to the Greater Cincinnati - Northern Kentucky Film Commission, which had lobbied to bring the film to this area.
Director Jonathan Demme said he had hoped to make his headquarters in Cincinnati, but discovered that most of the original sites disappeared, as had nearby undeveloped land.
"We hated not being able to shoot in Cincinnati because there is something in this movie that is so about spirituality that to be able to actually walk the ground that Margaret Garner walked, that would be a strong investment in our process."
(At the time the film was scouting, Yellow Springs writer Joanne Caputo had not yet identified the farm in southern Boone County where Margaret Garner is likely to have lived as a slave. Ms. Caputo's discovery was reported Oct. 2.)
The film company scouted 10 states, he said, before they found a 300-acre tract in Maryland once used by the DuPont family for fox hunting. It offered the "vast, bucolic expanse" he was seeking for the rural scenes.
For sound stage shots, the city of Philadelphia offered free use of a civic center that had been vacated in favor of a new facility. That is where the company built a set to represent old Cincinnati, based on antique photos and drawings and other materials.
"We just researched everything we possibly could to a fare-thee-well, because if we just went on what was in the book, then all we'd know were details," Mr. Demme said. "To whatever extent we're capable of trying to re-create a certain verisimilitude true to the period, you've gotta know more than the details.
"When I think of our scouts going out, and they went to Cincinnati, they were desperately trying to gather as much data as they could about how Cincinnati looked and what was Bucktown like," a reference to a neighborhood that is now Eggleston Avenue, where parts of the story take place.
"We discovered that Lafcadio Hearn had done a bunch of stories down in Bucktown, and I read all of them. . . . We steeped ourselves in every way we possibly could about the period so we'd feel that much more at home there and that much more qualified."
He said he was also disappointed that plans fell through for a Beloved premiere in Cincinnati to benefit the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
"Maybe we'll do something or other there someday," he said.
