Welcome to Forgotonia

I finally got to see The Informant last weekend, after more than two years of waiting.

Why had I been waiting two years, you ask?

(Well, wouldn’t your interest have been piqued if your friend’s dad had plied his way onto the movie set with a box of donuts?

I think so.)

I worried that my viewing experience might suffer from all the hype, and from knowing too many details about the real-life story.

After all, I had been following the movie’s development for so long. I brought you news of Matt Damon hobnobbing with the local yokels on set in Decatur, IL. I wondered about local connections to the story via the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) plant in nearby Bushnell, IL.) I listened, rapt, to the episode of This American Life that detailed the true story of Damon’s character, Mark Whitaker (the whistle-blower-on-corruption-who-oh-by-the-way-was-also-corrupt). I got regular updates from my friend about her dad’s attempts to somehow work his way into the movie.

So by the time I finally got to sit down and watch it on DVD, I was worried it might not live up to my expectations.

But it turned out I had no reason to worry. Not because of its portrayal of central Illinois life, or anything else I might have expected, but because Matt Damon was so great, and so believable, as the shifty yet somehow sympathetic guy. I even lost sight of the fact that it was Matt Damon after awhile, (which is really saying something for an indie-movie snob). The film also does a great job of giving you the bigger picture of the flabbergasting ease with which the ADM businessmen price-fixed on an international scale.

But the truly critical question about the movie, of course, is how did my friend’s dad fare?

Let me refresh you about why he plied his way onto the movie set with a box of donuts when he first heard that the film would be shooting on location in central Illinois.

Here’s a snippet from his interview with the Rushville (IL) Times:

“Farrar and his Camaro recently responded to calls for extras and travelled to Decatur where he was hired to appear as an extra in a scene. Farrar said he and one other man are in the background of the scene shot at a Decatur motel swimming pool with Damon and co-star Scott Bakula. Farrar’s Camaro also may make an appearance since the producers also needed vehicles from the early 1990s for the movie. “I really like doing this and getting into these movies,” said Farrar, who is retired from the City of Rushville. “It’s the best work I’ve ever done – a lot better than mowing yards.”
When first visiting with the casting agency for the job, Farrar said he took a box of doughnuts from Rogers Bakery in Rushville as a gift.
“They loved them,” he said. “They called me the doughnut guy.”

Sadly, it turns out my friend’s dad didn’t get his time in the spotlight. (Er, background.) His scene at that Decatur motel (described in the snippet above) was unfortunately cut from the film.

But his purple 1995 Camaro, which looks like this if you’re interested, fared much better.

It appears in the latter half of the film, just before the scene in which Damon’s character (starting to really crack) meets with a new lawyer or a reporter at a hotel (divulging a bunch more stuff he’s not supposed to). The camera shows the parking lot of the motel, and not only is the car clearly visible, but the camera hangs there for a good couple of seconds.

It was really quite a star turn. I got so excited I made C-Nor pause the DVD so we could go back and look at it again.

As far as Mr. Farrar goes, I’m sure he’s faring well. Here’s his final quote from the Rushville Times:

“I think that since there are just the two extras in the scene I could get mentioned in the credits, but it could end up on the cutting room floor with the other broken dreams.”

Have you seen the movie? What did you think? Do you know anything about local ties to the story via the Bushnell plant? Leave me a comment below.

One of those times where the placement of headlines on a web page has to crack you up a little (from the Regional/State section of the PJ Star.com) :

(first headline)

Spoon River College filled with ‘Rage’

Updated Apr 02, 2010 @ 07:37 PM

The votes are in, and the new mascot for Spoon River College is one that students and administrators hope will be all the “Rage” across campus. Full story here.

(then, under that story, this one :

Spoon River College issuing $3.5M in bonds to remain stable

Posted Apr 01, 2010 @ 10:22 PM

Spoon River College will soon issue $3.5 million in bonds that taxpayers will have to repay during the next 10 years because the state is behind in its payments to the school. Full story here.

Please allow me to give a huge thanks to the reader who alerted me to this story (via a comment on a previous post).

This esteemed reader landed on my blog because he or she had Googled the word “Forgotonia” after hearing it mentioned on the syndicated public radio news-magazine show Here & Now.

It turns out that our very own forgotten western Illinois region was mentioned on the show because it is featured in a new book: Lost States: True Stories of Texlahoma, Transylvania, and Other States That Never Made It.

On the radio show, the host and author talk about this region as being  “just corn”–and why our title still applies (i.e., why we’re still “losers.“)

(As always, I find that it’s both exciting and unsettling to hear our region described and articulated from the outside perspective.) You can listen to the host’s interview with the author, Michael J. Trinklein, via the Here & Now web site’s archives (scroll down to “The States that Didn’t Make the Cut” and click on the “Listen” icon.)

I went a’Googlin’ after I listened to the clip. I didn’t find a lot of information on this author or his background, but I did check out his Lost States blog. (I think that in addition to the fact that we are both interested in concepts like Forgottonia, we would also be friends because he makes fun of Sarah Palin. Points!) If you’re curious about which other proposed states Trinklein covers in the book, you can take a quick tour via this Flickr page with images of the proposed states.

Also, I ordered the book as a gift for my dad (a lifelong Forgotonia resident) for his birthday. Last weekend, when I was in Iowa City, I saw a copy in Prairie Lights and had to sneak a peak.  When I flipped to the Forgotonia section, I saw a picture and cutline that (as on the radio show) made some kind of quip about Forgotonia residents not having much more to love than corn syrup. (It filled me with that same mixture of feelings I got when I had read Barbara Ehrenreich’s description of my birthplace and homeland as  “industrial-agricultural wasteland.”)

I desperately wanted to read more while I was in the bookstore, but figured I should preserve the experience of sitting down to pour over it.  So now  I’m excitedly waiting until my dad’s copy arrives in the mail today  so I can read it before giving to him for his birthday.

Did you hear the Lost States story? Do you think we still deserve the Forgotonia title? Do you think we are unique because we still don’t have that interstate? How do you feel when you see or hear our region mentioned in the news, pop culture, or literature?

Let me hear from you in the comments below.