Movies a boon for Canton businesses
Tyler Cleveland
Dozens of crew members set up for a film shoot outside Deerfield Mini Mart Tuesday afternoon. Scenes from “Battlecreek” are being filmed in the Canton area this week.
CANTON – With three movies filming in the downtown area, several businesses located on Canton’s Historic Square have seen an uptick in foot traffic in the last two months.
Last Friday, the movie crews transformed the area to create the setting of small-town America, circa 1940, to film a scene from “Same Kind of Different as Me.”
And on Tuesday, a whole other set of workers was shooting a scene for “Battlecreek” near Deerfield Country Club.
Joe Watts, owner of Noble Watts Jewelers on North Union Street on the west side of the square said he doesn’t care what they are shooting, so long as they are shooting it.
“We love it when the movies come shoot here,” he said. “We have no problem with it at all.”
As his sister Alice Jean Hawkins explained, Watts shouldn’t.
“We’ve definitely seen an increase in traffic,” she said. “When you’re from a small town, you know all the locals, so when there are new people walking the streets, you can tell.”
The good news for Canton’s small business owners is that the transplants – some here to work on the movie sets and some just to rubber-neck – are shopping and eating local.
The restaurant business is tricky, especially in the first year, so Alex Davis, director of operations at one of Canton’s newest eateries, the Frisky Biscuit, said the restaurant is delighted to have all the business it can handle.
“We’ve seen a good bit of traffic from the movies that are filming,” said Davis, who has managed the restaurant since it opened in October. “The movie crews often come in for lunch and breakfast, and they are pretty loyal customers. I see the same group for lunch and breakfast at least 3-4 times a week.
“It’s good for business, for sure.”
Chip Fendley, who describes himself as the anything-and-everything man at Cilantro’s Mexican Grill on Center Street on the northeast corner of the square sings a similar tune.
“I’d say our business has picked up a bit from the movies,” he said. “The crews come in and stay all the time when they aren’t on-set.”
Fendley added that the restaurant landed the contract to handle catering for “Battlecreek,” and provides meals for 75 to 80 people twice a day, five days a week.
Besides the increased traffic, some business owners said they’d even spotted a celebrity or two.
“I wouldn’t know most famous people if they walked up and introduced themselves,” Hawkins said, laughing. “But I have seen (“Battlecreek” director) Allison Eastwood walking up and down the street, and that was exciting.”
That enthusiasm among Canton business owners, particularly at the center of the action on the square, is precisely what Canton Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and Film Office Director Jo Ann Gordon envisioned when her office decided to double-down on attracting movie shoots to the city.
“My office is constantly trying to recruit films and make the industry an opportunity as an economic engine for the city of Canton,” Gordon said. “That we’ve gotten to the point now where we’ve recruited these three movies is just a culmination of hard work.
“The best part of all of it – even better than the economic engine that film brings to an area and, of course, how excited people get about it – is that these visitors to the state of Mississippi, Madison County and Canton will gain first-hand knowledge of how hospitable, forward-thinking, visionary and dedicated the people here are.”
That’s a notion Hawkins said she definitely can get behind.
Well that – and the increase in income that comes along with it.
“(The new customers) have been buying from us,” she said. “We’ve sold quite a few things – not necessarily for the movie but to folks who were just shopping for themselves. It might be a little inconvenient at times with the parking situation and the traffic being re-routed, but I think it’s a very positive thing of the city of Canton.”
