News

Movie starring Josh Brolin filming in area

By Bill Moss, Published: January 30, 2016

A production crew has been in Hendersonville off and on over the past several weeks filming a movie starring Josh Brolin and Danny McBride.

The movie, The Legacy of The Whitetail Deer Hunter, is about a father, played by Brolin, taking his son on a deer-hunting trip. A casting company with offices in Wilmington, Fincannon & Associates, held auditions for the role of the boy, 10-13 years old, last September.
“We did cast a boy from the South for the role,” said Olivia Arokiasamy, a casting assistant for Fincannon.
The crew filmed scenes at DuPont State Forest and at a home in Tall Timbers off U.S. 64 in Edneyville and staged for several days earlier this month at Grandad’s Apples on U.S. 64 east of the Wal-Mart.
“They just set up base camp here for four days,” said Leslie Lancaster, who operates the apple stand and farm with her husband, Pat. The crew set up a catering tent and stored equipment there while filming at Tall Timbers and other locations in Asheville and in Transylvania County. It's also been shooting the movie in Rosman.
The filming at DuPont was far less elaborate than the movie shoot for the Hunger Games, the mega-hit that brought a flood of teenage fans into the state forest.
“They came in for a couple of quick days back in November,” Bruce McDonald, assistant supervisor of the state forest, said of the Deer Hunter crew. “They just did a couple of simple scenes in the rock quarry area. It’s not an area real common for folks to get to.” The crew also shot scenes at the base of Triple Falls. McDonald said the quarry scene was more of a dialog scene than an action scene, and did not involve spectacular special effects like the trees on fire in Hunger Games.
The Legacy of The Whitetail Deer Hunter was co-written by McBride and John Carcieri with Jody Hill, who also directs. It’s produced by Rough House, a production company made up of McBride, Hill and David Gordon Green. That team also produced Eastbound & Down, a hit comedy series on HBO.
The son of actor James Brolin, Josh Brolin won broad critical acclaim for his starring role in No Country for Old Men, a 2007 movie that won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. He also starred as Supervisor Dan White in the film Milk, in 2008, and received praise for his portrayal of George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s film W.
“We’ve heard about it,” Karen Baker, assistant director of the Tourism Development Authority, said on Monday. “I know they’ve been doing some shooting around town. Sometimes we hear from movies coming in and sometimes we don’t. If they’re looking for sites they will contact us but they don’t always contact us.”