The Unofficial "Signs" Movie Site

Joaquin Spotting:
By Leigh

All righty then... I took a little drive today with Jimbo. Ended up in a field a little ways in back of Delaware Valley College near Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Lo and behold, there was the set! We had found it! It is on a tiny tiny rural road, you'd miss it if you blinked once. Don't even know the name of the road, maybe it had none, it was that rural.

We knew it was the place immediately because of all the activity in the middle of nowhere. So we pulled up to the gate, and there was a security guard there. Very nice guy, thank you whoever you are! He told us "nobody's here, yet, except workers", that they were getting *ready* to film, and that actual filming would begin by the end of next week. I believed him, because I had a pretty good view, and no camera equipment or set lights were in sight. Only the hustle bustle of crew getting stuff in order. A short distance away we saw a huge farmhouse, and I said, "oh, that's the house they're going to use, that's really pretty!" It was 2-story, blue with red trim, if I remember correctly, sitting in the middle of the cornfield. The guard laughed and said, "they popped that thing up a little while ago, it's just a shell, nothing's in it." It looked like it had been sitting there forever, I was amazed.

There were large white accommodation tents erected in back of the guard's station. I guessed they would be used to feed the cast and crew during filming...there is NOTHING around for miles, no restaurants, not even a goddamn 7-Eleven to buy a Coke, and I thought they had those stores on the freakin moon.

Out over the cornfield, there were several pieces of big machinery. It kind of looked like the machines were flattening the cornrows into designs to form the basis for the movie. There were big booms attached to them, and guys were standing at the end of each boom with long implements.

The guard was very accommodating to us, and while of course he didn't let us onto the set, we talked at the gate with him for a good 20 minutes, and all the activity was happening directly behind him, in our full view. He gave us a vantage point to watch the filming once it begins. He pointed to a hill within spitting distance of the set, and he said that it would be perfect to watch the action. He told us to come back the following week, and to bring a videocam with a good zoom feature.

It is a given that Joaquin is staying in Philadelphia for the duration of this film. It's about a 45 minute drive from the site. I guess he has rented a car to make the daily trip out there and then back. Anyway, it was very uplifting to have found the site, and when we returned home, I treated Jimbo to dinner as thanks for putting up with my nerves all day.

So it looks like we'll probably be going back to the site in the near future, I'm not sure when. But I'll bring my videocam, oh yeah.

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