When Hollywood Came East Of The Mountains

The phone rang, it was my son James. “Hey Dad, I just had a call from the Apple Commission, there are some movie guys who are looking for good locations to shoot a film up here. Is it okay with you if we let them visit the Keystone (our family orchard in Entiat) and take some pictures?”

- Dale Foreman

This was in October 2018. Location scouts? A movie, what kind of a movie, what is it all about? Do we want a cast and crew wandering all over the orchard? We have a business to run.

What is it called? East of the Mountains. What is it about? Some medical doctor from Seattle who grew up in Chelan County gets cancer and wants to come home for one last bird hunting trip before he dies.

So who are the stars? Tom Skerritt and Mia Sorvino. Sounds interesting, let them come look at our property and see where it leads.

The author of the book, David Guterson, had already had one very successful novel that was made into a movie, Snow Falling on Cedars. I remember my wife Gail read that in her book club and loved it.

We decided to let the scouts visit the orchard and see if it was what they were looking for.

Meanwhile, I bought the book and read it. The story is sad, a well-respected heart surgeon in Seattle suffers the twin tragedies of losing his wife and being diagnosed with cancer himself. He is depressed and not sure he can go on living in pain. He decides to take a trip back home, to his roots in NCW and go bird hunting with his beloved dog. That is when the trouble begins.

A few days later a van pulled into the orchard in Entiat and out jumped the author, the executive producer, the producer Jane Charles, the director SJ Chiro and a couple of photographers.

They wandered around, took lots of photos and some movies and we chatted about the process. They were going to look at a few other orchards in Cashmere, Malaga and Quincy and then decide which ones to use for the movie.

Of course if we made the cut they would send us a contract. And they did come back a couple weeks later when there were still Red Delicious apples hanging from the trees to take more film clips.

We had no idea how many people it takes to film a big-time movie. But in June of 2019 we experienced it.