On Location - January 3, 2001

HBO Films next month will debut its civil rights drama "Boycott," which follows the events surrounding Rosa Parks' famous refusal to give up her seat on a public bus in Montgomery, Ala., in December 1955.

Pay attention when you watch the feature — none of it was shot in Alabama.

Instead, "Boycott," which combines scripted scenes and real documentary footage, was filmed in and around Atlanta, where production wrapped in late November.

The picture is only one of several high-profile projects to come to Georgia in the past year, among them Paramount's "The Gift" starring Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi, DreamWorks' "The Legend of Bagger Vance" with Will Smith and Matt Damon and Buena Vista's "Remember the Titans" featuring Denzel Washington.

Although metro Atlanta counts about 3 million residents and could pass for any modern city onscreen, a number of the burgs a few miles outside the city's perimeter haven't changed much in the past 50 years. And that's the way filmmakers looking to re-create the South during the struggles of the civil rights era like it.

In the face of neighboring progress, those towns have managed to retain an authentic ambience underscored by historic buildings, quaint courthouses and town squares, yet are close enough to the production hub of Atlanta to make them convenient for production, said Lee Thomas, location liaison for the state's Film and Videotape Office.

"You can locate your office in Atlanta and shoot in a small town 30 miles away, and you have the benefit of equipment rental or other amenities you wouldn't find in a place like Selma, Alabama," she said.

Take the farm community of Griffin, for example. Located about 40 miles south of Atlanta, it counts about 23,000 residents and cites its biggest employers as the Newton Crouch fertilizer company or the local towel factory. It is also becoming something of a movie production center.

Rapper Ja Rule recently wrapped a music video there, and Griffin was also one of the settings for "Boycott," standing in for Selma and Montgomery.

In fact, the town has hosted 28 movies and five commercials since 1986, estimated Herman Parker, who served as the city's assistant police chief for 35 years until recently retiring. He assists with location scouting, security and rerouting traffic when productions roll into town.

"It's a versatile city," he said of Griffin, where he was born and raised. "Productions can come in and make it look like from about 1935 all the way up to the year 2000. From what some of the crew was telling me, Selma and Montgomery had changed and have modern buildings. They were looking for older buildings they could use for different angles and camera shots."

"Boycott" executive producer Shelby Stone said the shoot in Griffin lasted about one week and included visits to old storefronts, railroad tracks and a local jail that, though closed in 1911, still housed gallows. "There are huge parts of downtown Griffin that have yet to be marred by anything like skyscrapers or buildings not of that period," she said. "The local townspeople also made great extras."