A prop house used in Tim Burton’s 2003 film Big Fish was destroyed by a lightning strike-sparked fire in Alabama this weekend. According to a post on the Facebook page for Jackson Lake Island (via Deadline), a private island in Elmore County, Alabama where the fictional town of Spectre was built for the Big Fish set, a house on the island was lost to fire — though none of the goats that reside on the island were harmed. A follow-up post on Monday noted that the rest of the town was fine and the island would be open for visitors as normal.
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Other than one week in Paris, Burton filmed the entirety of Big Fish in Alabama with the scenes featuring the town of Spectre filmed on the island. The prop town was created specifically to look abandoned. A few years after the conclusion of filming, some of the buildings began to collapse and there was a fire caused during cleanup that caught some of the other buildings on fire as well, destroying the “town’s” commercial district. Another house was torn down after flooding made the building unsafe. Several of the buildings remained intact, however, and visitors to the island are able to walk around the remainder of the movie set.
What is Big Fish About?
Based on Daniel Wallace’s 1998 novel of the same name, Big Fish starred Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, Alison Lohman, Robert Guillaume, Marion Cotillard, Steve Buscemi, and Danny DeVito. It tells the story of frustrated son who tries to distinguish the fact from fiction in the life of his father, a notable teller of tall tales. The film featured a series of fairy tale vignettes with a Southern Gothic fantasy tone and was a modest box office success, grossing $122.9 million on a $70 million budget. It was critically well-received and received some acclaim, garnering four Golden Globe nominations as well as both and Oscar and a Grammy Award nomination for the score by Danny Elfman.
Billy Crudup Tried to Convince Tim Burton That He Was the Protagonist of Big Fish
Speaking with ComicBook.com‘s Chris Killian earlier this year about his series, Hello Tomorrow!, Crudup revealed that he tried to convince Burton that his character, William — the son in the story who struggled with his father’s tall tales — was really the protagonist and that Burton simply wasn’t having it.
“No question, I am in the ‘Jack’ phase of my life now. Looking back, I relate much more to Albert Finney’s character now than I did when we did the movie. I can remember trying to convince Tim Burton that my character was the protagonist. In fact, he was the one who was holding on to the truth, and everyone kept saying, ‘No no, Billy, you’re not getting it. The beautiful fantasies that he’s creating are making a magical life.’ And I was like, ‘No! If he could just give him the truth then both of them would be in the reality and they could share the present together and then really have love.’” Crudup then joked about wanting to get a “colorful monologue instead of being the annoying sidekick.” He added, “But now, yes, being on the other side… it’s a lot easier.”
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