“Forrest Gump” was a book written by an Alabama author and the Oscar-winning movie about it is set in a fictitious Alabama town.

But the 1994 movie starring Tom Hanks is shot in South Carolina and Georgia, where local officials have capitalized for years by highlighting its filming locations and raising tourism dollars in Savannah, Georgia.

It’s a tourism experience linking Hollywood with Savannah’s history and is an example of what Alabama officials hope to recreate with its own film tours as the state’s film catalogue continues to grow.

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It’s also a topic of interest among officials close to the state’s film industry following Birmingham native Daniel Scheinert’s big night during this month’s Oscar Awards. He was the co-writer and co-director for “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which won seven Academy Awards including “Best Picture.”

“When locations that people recognize are part of a movie, it is a benefit to promote those as a destination,” said Lee Sentell, the state’s director of tourism.

Though no program has been identified, local and state officials aligned to the state’s film industry are aware of a need for some sort of film trail. Officials have also acknowledged that movies produced in Alabama could be intertwined with the U.S. Civil Rights Trail, as movies like 2014′s “Selma” connect Hollywood with the state’s complicated past.

“I do think there is enough for a statewide film trail, but what that exactly looks like, we haven’t put it together,” said Lois Cortell, senior development manager with the city of Montgomery. “It’s something lots of people are talking about. We have a lot of sites.”

Civil rights and Hollywood

For now, the idea is being discussed more at the local level in cities like Montgomery where recent production of two movies stirred talks about a city movie trail.

• “Just Mercy,” the 2019 film starring Michael P. Jordan as Bryan Stevenson, a Harvard-educated lawyer who travels to Alabama to defend disenfranchised and wrongly condemned Black men. The movie features identifiable shots of Montgomery, including a scene in which Jordan is seen crossing a bridge over the Alabama River.
• “Son of the South,” the 2020 movie about civil rights activist Bob Zellner, the first white field secretary for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

“I know exactly where that scene is and it’s clearly Montgomery,” said Cortell, whose job includes coordinating the activities of MGM Film Works and connecting film producers with city services and businesses. “It would be a great film trail location and it would also bring people to our riverfront park.”

Cortell said there are film locations already line up with established tourist sites, such as Dexter Avenue Church where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was once a pastor and helped organize the Montgomery bus boycotts in 1955.

She added, “In Montgomery, they align nicely with known destinations. The Freedom Rides Museum, a lot of films use that spot. That’s why we might do more of a virtual tour around Montgomery.”

Meghann Bridgeman, president & CEO with Create Birmingham/Film Birmingham, said film and history could intersect through a tourism opportunity in Birmingham, which has its own self-guided civil rights heritage trail.

“I think even more interesting than highlighting places where famous actors/directors have been, are the filmmakers who tell stories about Alabamians, and especially about the courageous Civil Rights history here,” she said. “Those stories will draw people to our city to make meaningful memories, experience the beauty of the Magic City, and ultimately be inspired.”

Tommy Fell, director of the Mobile Film Office, said the creation of a statewide film trail is something that if it’s pursued, “needs to be executed well.”

“It may be a little while before we see one,” he said.

Movie site tours

Cortell said she believes it’s doable, and that the state has enough material to pull together a tourist attraction.

Indeed, Alabama has plenty of material to work with, even if the number of blockbusters produced in the state is lacking compared to next-door Georgia, known as “Hollywood of the South,” where the film tax credits exceeded $1.2 billion last year. Alabama caps its annual credits at $20 million.

Georgia cities and towns have also capitalized on the state’s Hollywood investments. In Senoia, Georgia – south of Atlanta — the city of about 5,000 residents is a tourist destination for fans looking for filming locations of the hit cable show, The Walking Dead.

Atlanta hosts a superhero movie tour, taking visitors to the film locations for “Ant-Man,” “Captain America: Civil War,” “Avengers: End Game,” and “Black Panther.”

Other cities in the U.S. elevate their local tourism with tours of filming locations. Salem, Massachusetts – already a tourist attraction for its connection to the 17th century Salem Witch Trials – hosts a movie location tour for 1993′s “Hocus Pocus.”

Some cities and their film productions go hand-in-hand, and tourism spawns from them. Philadelphia has the “Yo, Philly!” Rocky Film Tour, and New York City has tours of sites made famous during Seinfeld’s run in the 1990s.

Mobile connections

Mobile has had its share of recognizable celebrities visit in recent years, even if most of the movies they were in are considered low budget. Wrestler-turned-actor Dave Bautista was filmed at Hayley’s in Mobile in 2014, Danny Glover was filmed in front of the RSA-Trustmark building, and Robert DeNiro shot a movie at The Battle House Hotel.

Nicolas Cage has been in the Mobile area multiple times and was frequently spotted downtown during the 2013 filming of “Rage.” “Cagespotting” became a popular activity for Mobilians that summer, and it was not uncommon for the unpredictable actor to be found at downtown eateries and parks.

The city might have been home to the only blockbusters shot in Alabama. In 1977′s science-fiction thriller “Close Encounters of a Third Kind” won Steven Spielberg an Oscar for “Best Director,” and was shot primarily inside a large hangar at Brookley Field because a similar venue was not available in California. Other notable film scenes include a house located on Howells Ferry Road in the Colonial Heights subdivision, which was shot with actor Richard Dreyfus. The movie’s evacuation scene takes place in Bay Minette.

South Alabama also has other untapped sites that could lure the tourists. Curious horror movie buffs have already wandered to Byrnes Lake in Baldwin County because it was the filming site for two movies – “Frankenfish” in 2004 and “Friday the 13th, Part VII” in 1987.

Byrnes Lake boat landing is owned by Baldwin County taxpayers and was used as a makeshift Camp Crystal Lake during the filming of Friday the 13th, Part VII. It was the first of the movies in which actor Kane Hodder portrayed the hockey mask-wearing Jason Vorhees, though today’s slasher movie buffs tend to recognize a private Boy Scout camp in New Jersey as the original home for the popular film series.

Actor Tony Kiser, who starred in the 1987 sequel and who later became best known for his role as Bernie Lomax in the cult classic Weekend at Bernie’s and its sequel, told AL.com in 2015 that he could see the Baldwin County site as a tourist destination if done right.

Some of the most successful movies shot in Alabama in recent years do not have notable landmarks identifying their locations. Among them is 2017′s “Get Out,” considered the top-grossing movie shot in Alabama, which was filmed in Fairhope and Mobile. But the film did not include any recognizable landmarks from either Mobile or Baldwin County.

Complications

An Alabama film trail could also be complicated because the state’s most recognizable Hollywood production – “To Kill a Mockingbird” – was not actually filmed in Monroeville. The 1962 film based on Harper Lee’s novel is based in ficitious Maycomb, which is inspired by Monroeville, but it was filmed in Hollywood.

But that hasn’t stopped Monroeville from capitalizing on the film’s popularity. The Old Monroe County courthouse, built in 1903, draws over 30,000 visitors annually after it became a full-time museum in the 1990s.

“Many, many people who come to Monroeville will say they swear that the movie was filmed there when, in fact, it’s not,” said Sentell.

The Old Monroe County courthouse was measured and “essentially reconstructed on a sound stage in California,” by the production team’s art directors, who would go on to win an Academy Award for “Best Art Direction – Black and White.”

“They did such a great job replicating the courtroom, which is iconic,” said Sentell.

Georgia’s mammoth movie-making machine could also complicate an Alabama film tour.

“People think the (2002) movie, ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ was filmed in Alabama due to the reference of coon dog cemetery (in Tuscumbia), but it was filmed outside of Atlanta,” said Sentell.

Gump was a movie based on a novel by the late Winston Groom, a Mobile native who lived in Point Clear. It was filmed in South Carolina and Savannah, where the public can now tour Chippewa Square where Forrest’s iconic bench scene takes place. The actual bench is located at the Savannah History Museum.

The movie’s production did not once set foot in Alabama.

“Georgia has done a great job of pulling an awful lot of good films from California,” said Sentell, adding that local film offices in Birmingham, Mobile and Montgomery will help keep the state competitive in attracting movies including some that might become major hits.

And that, in turn, could lure people to Alabama in search of knowing more about popular films with identifiable stars.

“Just Mercy and Son of the South, they were huge and there are very recognizable Montgomery locations in them,” said Cortell. “They are so recognizable that we were thinking of doing (a city) film trail.”