I grew up in the era of disaster movies. In the 1970s, they were box office behemoths. I'm not really sure why we all flocked to the theater to watch CATASTROPHES unfold, but we did.

The Airport movies, The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno (the absolute best of the bunch, in my opinion) had the highest profiles and made a ton of money. And they starred some of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time--Burt Lancaster, Dean Martin, Gene Hackman, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway, Steve McQueen.

Today, studios couldn't AFFORD to fill up a movie with comparable stars of 2021.

But TODAY, that doesn't matter like it did back then.

The other night, we watched Greenland on HBO Max. Gerard Butler stars as John Garrity, a structural engineer who receives a presidential alert informing him that he and his family (wife and son) are among the few chosen to be placed in shelters in order to survive a comet that has taken dead aim at Earth.

While fragments from Comet Clarke (and yes, in this film, Earth is threatened by something named "Clarke") are pelting the planet and yielding varying degrees of destruction, Garrity and his wife and son get separated. She manages to leave a note on their windshield, and he conveniently makes it back to the vehicle and sees it (despite all the mayhem).

It simply informs him to meet her and the boy and her dad's house. (Why he constantly tries to get cell service back in order to find out where she's headed AFTER he's read the note, I'll never know.)

Anyway, her dad's house is in Lexington. And I know there are other Lexingtons so I waited for more dialogue that would specify which one and, sure enough, they were talking Kentucky's Lexington.

In fact, "I have to get to Lexington" or "I have to get to Kentucky" were mentioned frequently. And when they DID get to "dad's house," the exterior shots looked a great deal LIKE Lexington, but the movie was shot in Atlanta. And, in fact, that's where it is initially set.

I get it. It's cheaper to film in Atlanta. That's where The Walking Dead is produced. I will always wish they'd do more filming in Kentucky. It would be a huge boost to our economy. I will keep beating this drum.

In the meantime, Greenland is pretty good.

Movies Filmed in Kentucky

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