A Time Capsule in Film of My Childhood Home

As I mentioned in my blog article, “Wilmington, North Carolina or ‘Hollywood East’” (https://www.apirateontheprairie.com/post/wilmington-north-carolina-or-hollywood-east), the area where I grew up became a home for the film and television industry starting in the 1980s. A friend from my junior high school and high school days recently shared with me and a few other high school friends an online newspaper article on some of the movies filmed in the Wilmington area. Specifically, the article shares seven movies that captured a glimpse of the Wilmington area as it was in the 1980s and the 1990s.

The area has definitely grown and changed in the years since I moved from the coast in 1997 and eventually away from North Carolina in 2017. I was last in the Wilmington area and North Carolina back in 2017 and the changes from what I remembered when I lived there were everywhere.

When I watch movies set in New York City during the 1970s through the early twenty-first century, I will sometimes catch a glimpse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center that were destroyed in the 2001 9/11 terrorist attacks. The movies capture New York City as it was then or as it was envisioned in the future in a movie like Escape from New York. It is definitely something that you notice. Likewise, a film shot in Wilmington could show a glimpse of a Wilmington that no longer exists due to one or more changes.

I would encourage you to read the article (click on link below), particularly if you live in the Wilmington area, have lived in the Wilmington area, or have been a visitor to the Wilmington area. In any event, you might discover one or more movies that you will enjoy.

“Time capsules: 7 movies that preserved '80s and '90s-era Wilmington for posterity”

https://www.starnewsonline.com/story/entertainment/movies/2025/03/23/film-footage-of-wilmington-nc-from-the-1980s-and-1990s-blue-velvet-maximum-overdrive-and-more/82332029007/