The Road in Erie, Pa.

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Figures. Eight months after I move away from Erie, Pa., a major motion picture sets up camp in Erie’s top tourist destination. How major? Starring Academy Award nominee Viggo Mortensen. Directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition), a notable Aussie director. Based on No Country for Old Men author Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Road. That major.

I read the GoErie.com article on the production team filming The Road‘s final moments being shot at Presque Isle. But now The New York Times has an article based around the Erie shoot, complete with pictures that are obviously shoot in the sand dunes of the pennisula.

Here’s the lead picture:

Now, I’m not going to joke about Erie being the setting for a post-apocalyptic flick. I’ll let the NYT speak for me:

The producers chose Pennsylvania, one of them, Nick Wechsler, explained, because it’s one of the many states that give tax breaks and rebates to film companies and, not incidentally, because it offered such a pleasing array of post-apocalyptic scenery: deserted coalfields, run-down parts of Pittsburgh, windswept dunes. Chris Kennedy, the production designer, even discovered a burned-down amusement park in Lake Conneaut and an eight-mile stretch of abandoned freeway, complete with tunnel, ideal for filming the scene where the father and son who are the story’s main characters are stalked by a cannibalistic gang traveling by truck.

Ah, home. Now that’s an endorsement Visit PA should start putting in its brochures. Pennsylvania, the apocalypse starts here!

I shouldn’t make fun. I live in Cleveland, and ever since Spider-Man 3 shot here, Euclid Avenue has been torn to pieces. Thanks, Sandman. At least we got a multi-million dollar transportation project out of it, though.

More ERI pics below: