Star-struck visitors

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, August 28th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: film tourism in historic cities.

Overall, tourism in the U.S. is a huge industry. In 2022, it contributed to about 10 percent of the jobs in the country.

One popular form of tourism is so-called film tourism. It’s exactly as it sounds: People visit specific locations from their favorite movies or television shows.

Personal example: Where I live in Atlanta, there are entire tours just of locations for the TV show Stranger Things.

EICHER: Oh, another TV show Burn Notice was a family favorite when the kids were all home, and I’ll never forget a to trip Miami—had to be more than a decade ago—and we had fun scouting out shooting locations. And we found a bunch of them.

Speaking of which, WJI mid-career graduate Jessica Eturralde spoke with some locals in a historic city that’s become a hot spot for precisely this type of tourism.

AUDIO: [SOUND OF HORSE CARRIAGE]

JESSICA ETURALDE: Savannah, Georgia was established in 1733. It’s the home of the nation’s largest historic district. Each year, more than 17 million visitors flock to the city that boasts of historic homes and churches with squares shaded by evergreen oaks draped in Spanish moss. But many tourists are less interested in those things. Instead, they want to see the setting of their favorite fictional films, books, and shows.

TOM HANKS: Hello. My name is Forrest. Forrest Gump. Would you like a chocolate?

TOUR GUIDE: At the beginning of Forrest Gump, a feather floats around that church steeple. It comes down here to Bull Street, the street we're on right now. Now don't look too hard, there's no bench there today. There's no bench there because that never was a real bus stop. They just made it look that way for the movie.

Forrest Gump just celebrated its 30th anniversary in July. Remarkably, three decades after the film’s premiere, one of Savannah’s most sought after requests is to take a photo with the bench from the movie.

COFFEE SHOP OWNER: I just can’t believe people are still bringing it up.

The bench is so popular that the owners of Savannah’s oldest coffee shop, Gallery Espresso, discovered that even having an ordinary bench outside the entrance posed an unexpected problem: People were obsessed with taking pictures while sitting on their bench.

COFFEE SHOP OWNER: All of a sudden, there's two fellas that are just trotting off with the bench. And it was, they brought it back, but still it was pretty obnoxious for them to do that.

Despite the bench’s absence, tourists take turns standing in the middle of Bull Street to photograph their friends squatting next to the Chippewa Square sign. The sign is posted in the middle of a plant bed where Hanks once sat. The site was originally roped off to prevent tourists from trampling the plants, but locals say they eventually gave up.

ANTHONY LUNSMAN: They always ask, where was the bench? And where did the feather fall from?

Bicycle tour guide Anthony Lunsman says that about 60% of his customers ask to go there.

LUNSMAN: That's like one of their main questions is like, “Where's the Forrest Gump bench?” Like there's the Mercer house. There's Forsyth Park. There's all, you know, there's a ton of history, but they're like, where was the bench where he sat with his chocolates? Like, that is a big question.

Savannah isn't just known for the 1994 blockbuster—it's also featured in Cape Fear and Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Gallery Espresso even closed for a day to film a scene with Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore for the movie May December.

Georgia's film industry ranks third to California and New York. The state’s film tax credits provide an incentive for feature films to consider Georgia locations. Spending in the direct film industry increased from $93 million in 2007 to over $4 billion in 2022.

Films frequently choose historic cities, such as Savannah, as their backdrops. And although many locals groan, film tourism offers a unique boost to the local economy.

LUNSMAN: I mean, it was a great movie. I get that, but it's, you know, it is like, maybe like 60 percent of the time I talk to someone they want to like go to this square right here.

Lundsman is not the only one amazed by the star-struck phenomena in his city.

MUSIC: [Bill Conti - Gonna Fly Now]

In Philadelphia, where the notorious Rocky films are based, a man on Reddit wrote that he and his wife made a date one Saturday morning by counting how many people ran up the stairs and did the Rocky Pose. In one hour, they counted 110 people. Mostly dads.

Pennsylvania filmmakers are also petitioning the state to encourage more productions to film in their towns by offering better tax incentive programs.

Other historic cities, such as Santa Fe, New Mexico, are also taking advantage of film tax credits to attract productions in their historic towns. New Mexico claims over six billion dollars in film industry impact over the last decade.

As historic cities brainstorm how to maintain and expand tourism by wooing major film productions, locals can expect more fictional history enthusiasts to bypass historical places for settings tied to their favorite imaginative mediums.

Locals will find ways to entertain themselves by counting the runners, or do what the workers at the Savannah Theatre do: create a bingo game with tourists' most commonly asked questions.

THEATER WORKER: There are certain questions that we get asked every day or certain scenarios that come up. So I made a bingo board of all of them. And one of them is, where's the bench? Because we get asked that so much.

Film has the potential to connect us to our surroundings. Movies are a powerful tool for revealing and proclaiming a divine Creator in a world in need of hope.

But we must remain rooted in reality.

COFFEE SHOP WORKER: So, there's the history of the squares and some of the streets kind of comes out. So, no, they don't ask specifically about that. I think they're just all star struck. [Laughs]

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jessica Eturralde.

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