From These Roots

The following story was printed in the August 1989 edition of the North Greenville College Newsletter. The pictures in the slideshow below were taken by NGC staff and are housed in the NGU Archive.

Travelers probably had to check their road maps twice at the intersection of South Carolina highways 414 and 253 when they saw a Lufton, Ga., town limit sign in late May.

Even the residents of Tigerville scratched their heads in bewilderment when they discovered a Lufton post office marquee painted above the door where they have picked up their mail for years.

But when a Lufton police car began patrolling the streets of the peaceful settlement in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, many folks laughed. Hollywood had gone too far.

No, these changes were not due to a well-played prank by overzealous students from nearby North Greenville College. Nor was it due to a vote by the town council to change the name of the community.

These minor alterations were requested by the director of Coupe de Ville, Joe Roth, who decided to produce several scenes for his movie- starring Daniel Stern, Patrick Dempsey, and Arye Gross- at an old store building adjacent to the college campus.

The movie is set in 1963 and tells the story of three brothers sent by their father to pick up a 1954 Cadillac Coupe de Ville for a present on their mother’s 50th birthday, according to Rob Harris, production publicist for the film.

“The plot reveals how a high school senior, a college student, and a former Air Force sergeant get to know each other again after having gone their separate ways years earlier,” Harris said. “The action occurs on their trip from Michigan, where the car was sold, to their home in Florida.”

From the accounts of local persons performing small parts in the film script and interested bystanders, the scenes shot in Tigerville involve a road chase, which actually begins at Wood’s store.

En route through Georgia in the movie, the boys are pursued by the Lufton police for speeding. In his haste the driver swerves off the road and crashes into a highway sign.

After policemen talk with the driver, the boys decide to walk to a nearby store to telephone their father about the accident. But, they chicken out and elect to get the car fixed when they get back to Florida.

The old McCracken’s store, closed since the mid ’40s, was stocked with hardware items with brand names from the early ’60s to transform it into Futral’s Hardware Store in the movie. Kerosene lamps, automobile belts, tin washtubs, bales of hay, hoes, shovels and other items were added for effect.

Tigerville natives filed in and out of the doorway and sat outside the store to give an authentic air of a hustling, small-town business.

Production began at 7:30 a.m. and continued until dusk from Monday through Friday for one week, working on what will be about 15 minutes of the film script after editing. Special-effect crews, production assistants, tractor trailer rigs, a helicopter, recreational vehicles, antique automobiles, set props, cameras and studio equipment filled the streets.

The film crew from Morgan Creek/Rollins Morra Brezner Productions also shot scenes in Duncan, Pelzer and Cleveland, S.C., before moving to Ft. Myers in June. Although no release date has been officially set, Universal is expected to distribute the movie sometime between October 1989 and March 1990.

Since the writing of the 1989 NGC News article, the McCracken Store building was sold to North Greenville and now houses the school’s marketing team and PrintHub. If you watch the movie, which is rated PG-13 for strong language, you can see Tigerville around the 28-minute-mark.