Hollywood cashes in on Waterville’s decline
By Kirsten Scharnberg
Chicago Tribune

WATERVILLE – Hollywood does not always hunt for grim reality, but that’s what it found here.

Waterville’s once-thriving paper and textile mills have moved their production overseas, leaving families who contributed entire generations to those factory floors unemployed. School enrollment is a fraction of what it used to be. The “help wanted” section of the local newspaper is routinely smaller than the “work wanted” one. Mom-and-pop, get-a-lobster-cheap dives have called it quits, replaced in an instant by interstate-accessible Applebee’s, Ruby Tuesday, Denny’s and KFC.

As depressing as that all may seem, it has made Waterville the perfect backdrop for the filming of “Empire Falls,” the movie based on Richard Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel with the same title about a rundown, blue-collar Maine community where the economy never recovered after its shirt factory shut down.

So Paul Newman moved to town, as did his wife, actress Joanne Woodward.

And Ed Harris.

And Helen Hunt, Robin Wright Penn and Aidan Quinn.

For weeks after filming began last month, stargazing was the best day job to be had in Waterville. Hundreds of locals tried out to be extras; many of them were hired and quite a few even snagged speaking parts.

But after a while, no matter how thrilled the residents of Waterville were that Hollywood was camped out in their back yards, one fact became inescapable: The reason their town had been chosen was because it was as down on its luck as the fictional Empire Falls, because its past was so much more glorious than its present, because its future was so frustratingly uncertain.

This was art imitating life – real, hard life – and the excitement of seeing Waterville’s name roll through the credits wouldn’t make people’s situations any better or their struggles any easier.

“On one hand you’re so amazed to think that this major movie that everyone will see is being filmed right here,” said Scott Phair, a Waterville native and principal of the local high school. “But on the other hand, you feel just terrible that when the location directors went out looking for a shabby town in central Maine that doesn’t have much going for it, they thought Waterville fit the bill just perfectly. I’d trade in Hollywood for a good economic base, jobs that would keep our kids from moving away and a thriving downtown in a minute.”

Maine, according to figures from the National Association of Manufacturers, has lost the highest percentage of manufacturing jobs – 22.1 percent – of any state in the country over the last three years. That makes Maine the worst of the worst in a country that lost some 2.7 million jobs between July 2000 and August 2003, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Waterville has more than a lackluster economy in common with the town featured in Russo’s book, a novel he authored while living in Waterville and teaching at prestigious Colby College. Although Russo has said the town in his book is modeled on a number of struggling mill towns in central Maine, Empire Falls, like Waterville, is situated along a river. Its historic, slightly ramshackle business district has seen better days. And its residents are more than a little frustrated.

But the biggest similarity between the two towns is an empty shirt factory on the edge of downtown.

Until last year, Waterville was the home of famous C.F. Hathaway Shirts. Hathaway, the oldest shirt manufacturing company in the United States, had been in Waterville since 1837 and had even temporarily produced uniforms for Union soldiers during the Civil War.

Catherine Rancourt, 78, grew up in Waterville and worked in the Hathaway factory for more than 40 years.

But almost a year to the day before Hollywood rolled into town, the Hathaway plant closed, leaving hundreds of people out of work. Like so many manufacturing jobs in the U.S., the company had moved the bulk of its production to foreign countries where wages were lower.

The trend was something Maine and Waterville had experienced before.

Waterville, for its part, has seen plant after plant close in recent years: G.H. Bass, Cole Haan, Dexter Shoes, Scott Paper. Its population has dwindled from about 19,000 to barely 16,000. High school class sizes are about half what they were a generation ago, according to Phair, who, like the principal in Russo’s book, once attended the school he now runs.

In Russo’s book, the people of Empire Falls spend most of their time and energy gossiping about which company might move into the abandoned shirt factory and bring jobs back to the community. Miles Roby, the book’s main character, who is being played by Harris, observes at one point that sightings of potential factory investors happen in Empire Falls with about as much frequency and credibility as sightings of Elvis in various fast-food chains.

That kind of yearning for an economic jumpstart is tangible in Waterville today. Newspaper headlines since the closing of the Hathaway factory have chronicled every twist and turn in plans for the plant. “For laid-off workers, a stitch of hope in plan,” read one headline.

But so far, nothing has worked.

With prospects looking so grim in Waterville, residents have been searching for something – anything – that might lead to a brighter future. A large majority of them have thrown their support behind a proposal to build a $650 million casino that will purportedly bring in some 7,000 jobs to the southern portion of Maine.

The issue has become hot-button and controversial, largely pitting Maine’s wealthier coastal residents against the less affluent who live inland and who historically have relied on manufacturing jobs.

On Nov. 4, the casino initiative was defeated soundly.

If there is one positive thing going for Waterville, it is “Empire Falls.” Residents are hoping that if the movie is as big a hit as the book, it might lure tourists to town – maybe the way crowds flock to the “Field of Dreams” in Dyersville, Iowa.

The Maine Film Office, which works to attract production companies to film in Maine, has estimated that a movie the size of “Empire Falls” would create an economic impact of up to $250,000 per day of filming.

“It will hopefully be good for the local economy, but it’s also more than that,” said Lea Girardin, director of the film office. “It’s been so exciting for the people. It’s really captured everyone’s imagination, though I guess you don’t really need much of an imagination to understand what “Empire Falls’ is all about. So many towns in the state know firsthand what it’s like to lose your manufacturing base and to try to go on after that.”