Just watched The Memory Keeper's Daughter

on Lifetime. I loved the book, but the movie, as is often the case with books turned into movies, left much of the story out...and therefore lost much of the beauty of the book. Entire subplots were left out, so therefore you missed out on the significance of many of the things going on. It was a movie that probably looked great to someone who hadn't read the book, but sadly lacking to those who had.

Another thing that bothers me is that this story was supposed to have a setting of Lexington, KY, but was filmed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Why couldn't it be filmed in Lexington, or at least in the same COUNTRY? I understand that it is often cheaper to film in other countries, but you miss out on part of the story when you don't know anything about the area where it was supposed to have happened. Another one of the 'filmed on location' movies that was NOT was Cold Mountain. This movie was set in the Appalachian mountains, but was filmed in New Zealand!

A movie is in the works for a book set in one of my hometowns (remember, I'm a preacher's kid....never lived in one place for more than 5 years growing up!), Big Stone Gap, Virginia. If this movie is filmed elsewhere, it will lose SO much of the local flavor that Adriana Trigiani so lovingly weaved into the story. I KNOW some of the people that she based characters on in the story! I was in the drama that she refers to, and my husband is assistant principal at a school that she refers to as well. And Jack Mac, an important character in the four book series.....I hugged the REAL Jack Mac's neck at a mutual friend's funeral this past summer. So it would be a real travesty for this movie not to be filmed in the town on whose local oddities and idiosyncrasies it was based.

If you'd like to learn more about Big Stone Gap and the movement to film it there, please visit Film Big Stone Gap in the Gap!