Here we go again...

Just when people were starting to get over "Wrong Turn..."

Looks like it's time for another controversy regarding Hollywood's depiction of W.Va.. The casting call for extras in "Shelter," starring Julianne Moore, has been released.

From The Pittsburgh Tribune Review via Huffington Post:

The casting call scheduled for Sunday invites "men and women of all races, 18 or older," to try out as extras, according to the announcement from Downtown-based Donna Belajac Casting. But the extras wanted for the West Virginia scenes evoke images of "Deliverance" and "The Hills Have Eyes."

"It's the way it was described in the script," Belajac said Monday. "Some of these 'holler' people -- because they are insular and clannish, and they don't leave their area -- there is literally inbreeding, and the people there often have a different kind of look. That's what we're trying to get."
...

The announcement -- which was sent out in a news release and posted on the casting company's Web site -- asked for people with the following attributes:

"Extraordinarily tall or short. Unusual body shapes, even physical abnormalities as long as there is normal mobility. Unusual facial features, especially eyes."

According to IMDB, the writer of this film is Michael Cooney, whose past scripts include "Jack Frost" and "Jack Frost 2: Revenge of the Mutant Killer Snowman," so we're definitely going to be treated to high art. (Just so you know, he also directed both of these masterpieces of the popular 'snowman slasher' genre).

Chances are it will be a fairly stupid movie and, based on the writer's track record, a box office flop, but local political figures won't pass up an easy applause line. AP has Gov. Manchin's reaction:

"It's clear that they have no real understanding of who the people of West Virginia are," Manchin said. "And that's not only unfortunate, but in this case offensive. Certainly it doesn't sound like a movie worth watching."

And UMW president Cecil Roberts weighs in:

“Why must it be automatically assumed by the surgically enhanced ’beautiful people’ who populate Hollywood that those who live in the hills and hollows of places like West Virginia are all afflicted with physical abnormalities?” Roberts said.

[..]

“It harkens back to a dark time in our nation’s history when flimflam artists roamed the country making a quick buck with traveling ’freak’ shows, displaying human beings who may have different bodily characteristics, in darkened cages,” Roberts said. “I believe our society has progressed past that point — maybe not in Hollywood, but it has in other, more enlightened parts of America.”