MILLBROOK — The beauty of Dutchess County is well-known and film location scouts for movie and television are well aware of its appeal.
Here, you can have a forest, with deep woods, mountains, farms, and other rural and pastoral scenes. Then, five minutes away, you may find a charming village or a posh neighborhood with stately mansions and picturesque Victorian homes.
There are also a multitude of water possibilities such as lakes, rivers, ponds and fishing holes, not to mention covered bridges and massive bridges such as with Walkway over the Hudson, the Kingston Bridge and more.
While Red Hook and Rhinebeck seem to be perennial favorites, along with many other sites, Poughkeepsie has been central in more than one project, and Pleasant Valley and Millbrook have also had their 15 minutes of fame.
Actually, it was a lot more than 15 minutes. For instance, the five-part HBO series “The White House Plumbers” filmed in Millbrook, using Franklin Avenue and the Millbrook Diner.
“There was a lot of excitement and interest in the Village when HBO contacted us with a request to spend a few days to film some scenes from the subject movie in and around the Millbrook Diner,” said Millbrook Mayor Tim Collopy.
“Generous financial payments were made by the film company to those businesses that had to shut down for filming (the Millbrook Diner and Reardon Briggs Hardware) and some financial compensation was also provided to nearby businesses that were affected by shutting down Franklin Avenue.
The Village charged a flat fee which was to generously cover administrative costs as well as to pay premium rates for Village police traffic control.”
Of course, that’s the business end of it. What fun the Village residents had watching the filming!
The epic was “The White House Plumbers,” and extras were dressed in clothes from that period. Cars came from all over, also from that period, and were lined up in front of the diner, and up and down Franklin Avenue. The filming took several days.
The film, with an all-star cast including Woody Harrelson and Justin Theroux, tells the tale of how the Nixon administration ended up taking itself down.
Talking to the extras, and some of the car owners, it became evident that they not only got paid for their time and work, they loved doing it. Many of them have been in several movies and television films that have been done in this area. It was reported that more than 3,000 people answered the casting call for extras.
Collopy added: “While the film company was quite adept at crowd control and accommodating business needs, the biggest issues the Village had were that one, the scheduled film dates changed multiple times (even within a week of the last scheduled date), and two, the film crew needed to return for a second two-day period to complete filming.
“Despite the financial compensation, these changes caused a significant degree of frustration by business owners, residents and police such that the Board of Trustees will solicit input from the Millbrook Business Association and residents before allowing such future requests. We will also include a cancellation/reschedule fee as part of the contract terms.”
Knowing the interest of production companies in this area, Councilman Mike Murphy of the Town of Washington said of determining rates and rules for filming: “We have yet to address this issue. Hope to do so in the coming year.”
“This Much I Know Is True,” a six-part HBO special with Mark Ruffalo, was filmed mainly in and around Poughkeepsie, but some of the important parts were filmed at Pleasant Valley Estates on the Taconic, and mention was made of a major accident taking place on Route 22 between Brewster and Millerton.
The Taconic Developmental Disabilities Service Offices in Wassaic was also featured in several scenes.
In one scene, former state Sen. Sue Serino and the late Dutchess County Sheriff Butch Anderson and his wife, Danielle, are shown playing a psychiatric review board.
The Dutchess County Film Commission has listed more than 500 productions as having been filmed, all or in part, in the Hudson Valley. This, of course, is a huge area, but as more people visit, it is becoming better known and could see more and more activity from film companies.
There are several film companies that have already made the Hudson Valley their home, and proximity to New York City is a factor.
Casting calls are not uncommon in Dutchess County anymore, and many professionals in related fields have made this area their home.
NORTH EAST — Habitat for Humanity of Dutchess County will conduct a presentation on Thursday, May 9 on buying a three-bedroom affordable home to be built in the Town of North East.
The presentation will be held at the NorthEast-Millerton Library Annex at 5:30 p.m.
Any first-time home buyer interested should attend the information session.
The application for this pilot program home-buying opportunity must be made between May 1 and June 10.Minimum household income for the pilot program is $55,000 while maximum income is determined by family size.
Applications are available at the North East Town Hall.Habitat for Humanity describes itself as a nonprofit with global reach, working across the United States and in approximately 70 countries.
‘Migration Collage' by ransome
If you claim a single sobriquet as your artistic moniker, you’re already in a club with some big names, from Zendaya to Beyoncé to the mysterious Banksy. At Geary, the contemporary art gallery in Millerton founded by New Yorkers Jack Geary and Dolly Bross Geary, a new installation and painting exhibition titled “The Bitter and the Sweet” showcases the work of the artist known only as ransome — all lowercase, like the nom de plume of the late Black American social critic bell hooks.
Currently based in Rhinebeck, N.Y., ransome’s work looks farther South and farther back — to The Great Migration, when Jim Crow laws, racial segregation, and the public violence of lynching paved the way for over six million Black Americans to seek haven in northern cities, particularly New York urban areas, like Brooklyn and Baltimore. The Great Migration took place from the turn of the 20th century up through the 1970s, and ransome’s own life is a reflection of the final wave — born in North Carolina, he found a new home in his youth in New Jersey.
‘Square Quilting painting' by ransomeAlexander Wilburn
Map fragments of North Carolina feature heavily in a large collection of eight-by-eight collage and acrylic paintings, sold individually but together mounted on Geary’s wall resembling the stitched patterns on quilts, like the quilts by the late Black American artist Arlonzia Pettway. Along with artists like Annie Mae Young and Mary Lee Bendolph, Pettway was a renowned artist associated with the quilts of Gee’s Bend, generations of women in the town of Gee’s Bend, Alabama who preserved African American culture in beautiful and vibrant textile art with bold combinations of stripes, textures and colors. The influence is also wonderfully clear in ransome large-scale collages and acrylic paintings like “Square Quilt painting” on display at Geary. It’s a powerful symbol of Gee’s Bend’s legacy continuing on, even under a new artistic medium.
In the smaller works, called “Migration Collages,” painted portraits are combined with pieces of floral and pastel paper, evocative of the tradition of “Sunday Best” splendor worn in Black churches in the South. “The women elders at my Baptist church often greeted each other that way on Sunday mornings when one hat was more elaborate, colorful, or wider brimmed than another,” New York Times veteran Lena Williams wrote in her 1996 essay, “In Defense of the Church Hat.” “It was traditional to put on one’s newest finery for church, and in many historically black churches, the wearing of fancy hats by women carried both spiritual and cultural significance.”
“The Bitter and the Sweet” is on view at Geary through Sunday, June 2.
Hospitality, ease of living and just plain fun are rolled into one for those who are intrigued by the leisure-time Caravana experience at the family-owned Four Brothers Drive-in in Amenia. Tom Stefanopoulos, pictured above, highlights fun possibilities offered by Hotel Caravana.
The month-long process of unwrapping and preparing the various features at the Four Brothers Drive-In is nearing completion, and the imaginative recreational destination will be ready to open for the season on Friday, May 10.
The drive-in theater is already open, as is the Snack Shack, and the rest of the recreational features are activating one by one, soon to be offering maximum fun for the whole family.
Tom Stefanopoulos, the second generation helping to guide the Stefanopoulos family’s recreational complex, brings a deep understanding of hospitality and business sense in support of the multi-faceted enterprise, begun in the 1970s, that is now a mainstay of the town of Amenia, located on a corner in the heart of the commercial district. He paused for an interview on Friday, April 26.
Two luxury camping trailers, each with an attached wooden deck and fire pit, make up Hotel Caravana, and each offers a different fun vibe, Stefanopoulos explained. The larger of the two, offers a California lifestyle, retro to 1967, although its modern where it should be. It can sleep four.
The smaller Caravana sleeps two and offers a lifestyle of the future dating to about 2041. It’s a brand-new Airstream, Stefanopoulos noted. It also has an attached deck with firepit.
“We get a lot of New York City people,” Stefanopoulos said when asked what sorts of people are apt to be attracted to Hotel Caravana. “They want to experience the upstate life,” he added. The idea of sitting out on the deck while watching an actual drive-in movie appeals to them, as does room service offered by the restaurant.
The lobster rolls prepared by the Snack Shack, are served on brioche hot dog rolls, either Maine-style or Connecticut-style, and the lobster can be topped with caviar. Four Brothers version is praised by customers for the generous portion of lobster in each, and the price is competitive.
Caravana guests may book for a single night, or maybe two, or even longer, taking advantage of the bicycles to pedal along the nearby rail trail, a local amenity, Stefanopoulos noted.
“We make our guests feel like movie stars,” Stefanopoulos said of the hospitality. And, if they like miniature golf, it is just a few steps away from their Caravana deck.
Asked how and why the Caravana idea began, Stefanopoulos recalled that as the drive-in theater grew in popularity, people were traveling from greater distances away. The last film of the night might start at midnight, he said, so the idea grew that Four Brothers might be able to offer an accommodation to stay the night.
In addition to Caravana, Four Brothers offers an alternative of two or three tent camping sites.
Future plans may include a third Caravana, Stefanopoulos said. Also, there is a giant mastodon skeleton, presently in storage, that should be on display, he said.
“It’s pretty big,” Stefanopoulos added.
The playground might be enlarged in the coming seasons, and perhaps an old-fashioned arcade added for retro amusement.
The community that surrounds Four Brothers remains important to the Stefanopoulos family as they offer substantial summer employment opportunity. Stefanopoulos said that a goal is to contract locally for business needs, such as musical entertainment and advertising. The drive-in also schedules occasion fundraisers to benefit local organizations, including the Amenia Fire Company and area schools.
