5 Best 417-land Movie Mentions

Not quite a movie mecca, 417-land has still gotten some big-screen nods. Here are our are for the five best flicks with local ties.

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1. Waiting For Guffman (1996)

Movie Cliff’s Notes: Your standard, wacky Christopher Guest mock documentary (think Best in Show and This is Spinal Tap). Small-town Missourians put on a musical as a part of their town’s sesquicentennial celebration. Eccentric characters played by Guest, Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Catherine O’Hara and Fred Willard have hopes of taking the show to Broadway.

417-land connection: Waiting for Guffman is set in fictional Blaine, Missouri. Although most major online map sites (Google, MapQuest, MSN) place Blaine on the northwestern edge of 417-land near Nevada, Missouri, Vernon County doesn’t have so much as a plat listed for Blaine. At the beginning of the film, actor Larry Miller, who plays the town’s mayor says, “There’s a saying in Missourah, ‘If you don’t like the weather just wait five minutes.’ In Blaine, with hard work, I think we can get that down to three or four minutes.”

In a deleted scene shown on the DVD extras, Willard’s character talks about his days as a baseball player in high school: “You know I came this close to playing professional ball. They had a tryout camp down in Joplin my senior year in high school, and I knew from the competition around here that no sweat, I’d be signed. But the tryout camp was cancelled, so I never pursued it any further. But I still have what I like to call the St. Louey Cardinals letter from Sam Breadon, the owner, expressing an interest in my playing ball for their organization. Actually, it wasn’t from him. It was from me to the Cardinals showing that I was really interested in playing for them. But there was always that connection with the Red Birds.”