dpeters11 said:
And according to the Washington Post, it was filmed in Romania. They also pointed out that the dialects were wrong for the region. Like the WSJ, they compared it to a Western.
I was born and have spent esentually my entire life within 80 miles of site of the subject matter. The Central Appalachian accent (I will never know what it is to be black or hispanic, but the way some people have treated me just because of the way I speak and what it says on my DL, gives me some idea) is hard to pull off. Most movies go with what I would call "broadly southern" or a "western". However, if you study the settlement of this country, many Appalachians moved on to the Ozarks and on into Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. When I travel, particularly to California or Nevada, most people assume that I am from Texas when they hear me speak.
Marlin Guy said:
Romania is probably closer to 19th Century WV than 21st Century WV is.
Sorry, you are misinformed. First, your picture is of an active mine site. If you really want to learn about the wonderful process of mountaintop removal and reclamation, I can sugust a visit to many places that have been subject to this process, reclaimed, and returned to their original countours, which is what has been required by the EPA for almost 50 years. Most are once again forested woodlands, generally indistinguishable from the surrounding land. However many have formed the basis, in a region without enough developable land, for many unique uses.
You might want to visit some of the places seen in this video:
Or review the facts outlined here:
http://www.kentuckycoal.org/index.cfm?pageToken=mtmIssues
I personally will treat you to a round of golf at Twisted Gun any day.
Second, only 0.4% of Central Applachia is ameniable to mountain top removal in the first place. The rest of rural Central Applachia looks just like it did at the time of not only the Hatfields, but of Pocahontas' great great great granddaddy. I don't know where you are from, but I dare say more than 0.4% of the land looks different than it did before the so called "white settlement".
Third, Romania is not only a coal, but hard rock mineral, producing area. Before the overthrow, capture, and execution of its communist dictator, it followed esentually NO environmental regulations at all, either in mining or any other field of endeavor.
As to the general accuracy of the movie to the history, and of the topography, the Tug Fork (the border between WV and KY) really is about that deep and wide at that point, probably the least significant body of water used as a border in the USA) and the mountains are pretty accurate, although most of Mingo and Pike counties are FAR more steep than that, mountains are esentually vertical, with passes, both natural and those made by highway constuction.
The movie was pretty accurate. The point they missed is that most of this, was about land. In that culture, land was wealth. If you look at law cases from that time, 90% of them were about land. Land was timber, and timber was the only thing those people had to sell (the land remains totally unsuited for agriculture, and it took railroads and sophisticated engineering to exploit the coal, which would not happen until the early 20th Century.
