![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davemerrillA while back, years ago, I wrote an article about the Castlegate hotel where we held AWA I and where a bunch of Atlanta conventions went to be born or to die. The article is here: http://atlantafantasyfair.blogspot.com/2008/09/castlegate.html - and in the article I state as a fact that scenes from the film "Cannonball Run" were filmed there (that factoid came from the Atlanta Journal Constitution). If you've ever seen the picture you know that the opening of the film starts off with all the racers assembling at "The Old English Inn" to sign up and start. There's a scene where a car crashes into the lobby, a scene in a bar, lots of exteriors. So I obtained a copy of this film and have been digging through it trying to find images of the Castlegate, or as it was known at the time, the Dunfey's Royal Coach, from 1980.
So I'm watching the film, and while the interiors and the exteriors are similar, they really don't seem to fit the geography of the Castlegate. And further research has shown that a "Old English Inn" did exist at I-285 and Glenwood Road, and I have seen it stated that this is where the Cannonball Run scenes were filmed.
So I guess the question is, did an Old English Inn really exist at that location? Did Cannonball Run shoot there, or at the Dunfey's? Who wants to spend an afternoon going through the stacks at the public library digging up old AJC articles about the filming of Cannonball Run, or old ads for Atlanta hotels out of old Yellow Pages? And why am I wasting my time on this amazingly trivial nonsense?
I am appalled that hotels of such amazing ugliness existed not once, or twice, but covered the landscape like horrible scars. How many ugly "Ye Olde English" off-ramp hotels does one city need? I never got around the city a whole lot at the age of 10, being 10, but the Dunfey's was hard to miss when you're going down I-75 into the city. How many other tacky Tudor-style hotels infested Atlanta? America? The world?
So I'm watching the film, and while the interiors and the exteriors are similar, they really don't seem to fit the geography of the Castlegate. And further research has shown that a "Old English Inn" did exist at I-285 and Glenwood Road, and I have seen it stated that this is where the Cannonball Run scenes were filmed.
So I guess the question is, did an Old English Inn really exist at that location? Did Cannonball Run shoot there, or at the Dunfey's? Who wants to spend an afternoon going through the stacks at the public library digging up old AJC articles about the filming of Cannonball Run, or old ads for Atlanta hotels out of old Yellow Pages? And why am I wasting my time on this amazingly trivial nonsense?
I am appalled that hotels of such amazing ugliness existed not once, or twice, but covered the landscape like horrible scars. How many ugly "Ye Olde English" off-ramp hotels does one city need? I never got around the city a whole lot at the age of 10, being 10, but the Dunfey's was hard to miss when you're going down I-75 into the city. How many other tacky Tudor-style hotels infested Atlanta? America? The world?
