Decatur's Brush with Hollywood

As many of you probably have heard by now, Matt Damon is filming the movie "The Informant" in Decatur right now based on the ADM price-fixing scandal in the mid-90s. It is hard to believe that a major movie star and Hollywood movie production are filming as we speak in Decatur. Decatur gets a bad rap in the media, some deserved some not, but it is exciting to me that Decatur will be featured in an expected Hollywood movie blockbuster, even if it is based on a negative story. I have been following the movie production progress on Decatur's newspaper web site, http://www.herald-review.com/informant/. It is amazing to me how much the town cooperates in order for the movie production to proceed. Streets and businesses near production have been temporarily shut down, snow has been added for effect, the mall has put up its Christmas decorations, corn has been imported since the corn is only in the planting stage now, and Firestone has tranformed into an auto dealearship.

As a Hollywood junkie, I wish that I could go down to Decatur and seek out Matt Damon and other actors and try and meet them. Apparently, Matt Damon has been meeting fans and taking pictures with them. There are other well-known actors in the movie as well. Joel McHale (E! host of "The Soup") is playing an FBI agent and the guy from Quantum Leap is playing the FBI agent who deals primarily with Matt Damon's character (and coincidentally this character is playing my friend of a friend's dad). If I don't get the opportunity to take a trip back, I'll just have to wait until the movie is released in 2009. It will be so cool to be able to see my own hometown landmarks in a major motion picture!!

Wish me luck in my Matt Damon stalker endeavors!!