Judging by the slim Wisconsin chapter in Vacation on Location in the Midwest: Explore the Sites Where Your Favorite Movies Were Filmed, Hollywood gives the Badger State no respect. In fact, the only Wisconsin entry in this book on tourist-ready places featured in movies is Rodney Dangerfield’s Back to School (1986). That production used exteriors at UW-Madison to stand for the fictional Grand Lakes University. That’s all for a state with four seasons, cities and farms, rolling hills and woods—not to mention a lake big enough to pass for an ocean?
The book’s author, travel writer Joey Green, doesn’t try to explain. Even flyover South Dakota boasts Dances With Wolves, How the West Was Won and North by Northwest. But Green’s job isn’t to advocate but to present the facts via summaries of more than three-dozen popular movies shot (at least in part) in the Midwest with maps and descriptions of the settings. The Chicago church in The Blues Brothers (1979) where James Brown played the preacher? Vacation on Location will help you find it.
