Concrete, Washington, was struggling. It was the early 1990s, and timber jobs were scarce in the upper Skagit Valley. The big cement plant had closed decades before. And then, in 1992, in stepped an unexpected player: Hollywood.
“So all of a sudden Warner Brothers shows up,” says Cheri Cook-Blodget, who at the time was working for Skagit County out of a little storefront on Main Street. “And people up here are not familiar with Hollywood.”
This is the story of what happens when Hollywood comes to your small, isolated hometown, takes over everything, and then leaves.
The movie was "This Boy’s Life," based on the bestselling memoir by Tobias Wolff about growing up in the upper Skagit. It stars Robert DeNiro, Ellen Barkin and a virtually unknown teenager named Leonardo DiCaprio.
The story is set in the 1950s, and the set designers quickly set about taking the town back in time. Locals got jobs as extras, and people jockeyed for glimpses of the stars.
“There was so much hype around this movie, that this was going to put Concrete on the map,” says Valerie Stafford, who owns the Concrete Theatre, a historic movie house. “People were going to come from all over because Concrete had this movie filmed here. At one point there was even a desire to make the town a theme town, similar to Winthrop or Leavenworth. We were going to become the 1950s town.”
But then people saw the movie, and made some people reconsider whether this experience was good for Concrete at all. Nearly 30 years later, the community still doesn’t agree. Listen above to hear the story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChdiJANR4N0
