As a promotional gimmick upon reopening this year, the Heritage Inn began offering a “Movie Star Package” featuring a spa treatment kit and movie tickets.
The New Milford bed-and-breakfast never imagined it might star in a feature film itself.
A crew for the Tim Allen movie under production, “Six Wives of Henry Lefay,” shot a scene Oct. 17 using as a backdrop the façade of the Heritage Inn. Some of the movie”™s actors, including “24”star Elisha Cuthbert, stayed overnight there.
Any appearance on the silver screen could prove a shot in the arm for the inn, which had its closest brush with fame until now in its days as a tobacco warehouse when it hosted a stopover for Teddy Roosevelt on his famous “whistle-stop tour” campaign.
After a previous hotel management company vacated the building in 2005, property owner Luciano Sproviero had considered converting it into apartments before reopening the inn this past summer following a $700,000 renovation.
In 2006, Connecticut passed a tax credit to encourage movie production, which the state film office indicates has generated more than $300 million in sales receipts since its inception.
The state now allows Connecticut businesses and homeowners to promote their properties for movie location shoots. Greenwich”™s Delamar Hotel has done so, touting its Tuscan villa-inspired architecture. Besides its lodgings and restaurant, the Delamar Hotel markets itself as a venue for corporate meetings.
Heritage Inn manager Jillian Alps got onto the “Six Wives” producers”™ short list through the New Milford film office, which heard the production company was scouting locations in New Milford, possessor of a classic New England town green.
Alps thinks the process may have been expedited by her agreement not to promote the fact that actors were staying at the inn, as a security consideration.
While the process was quick ”“ the producers opted on a location shot at the Heritage Inn in a matter of a few weeks ”“ Alps thinks any inclusion in the movie will have a long-lasting impact on the small inn”™s future.
Connecticut belongs in exhibit A for the impact a starring role in a movie can have on a business ”“ following the 1988 Julia Roberts film “Mystic Pizza,” the namesake pizzeria in Mystic capitalized on its newfound fame to launch a line of frozen pizzas in supermarkets.
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Similarly, a starring role can punch a hotel”™s ticket ”“ in 2006, USA Today published a list of “10 great places to lodge yourself in a movie,” including the Mohonk Mountain House in New Paltz on the list. The 265-room Ulster County retreat was featured in “The Road to Wellville” starring Matthew Broderick and Anthony Hopkins, giving it free publicity not just for its spa but for its conference house that can handle 65 visitors, as well as smaller meeting spaces.
Movie notoriety can work even when it”™s only a product of Hollywood”™s blue smoke and mirrors. The hotel that inspired Stephen King”™s novel “The Shining,” The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., was not filmed in Stanley Kubrick”™s film adaption of the book ”“ instead, the exterior scenes needed were shot at The Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon.
Despite the film”™s horror theme, The Stanley Hotel prominently features its contribution to “The Shining” in promotional materials.
Though the Timberline Lodge actively touts itself as an ideal location for video and photo shoots, it does not mention its most famous starring role in promotional materials online.
While hotels may not have been lining up for a starring role in “Werewolf ”“ the Devil”™s Hound” shot in Connecticut this year, proprietors can only dream of inclusion in a future blockbuster like “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skull,” which shot scenes in Bridgeport, Essex and New Haven.
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