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| The courthouse in Covington, Georgia. Photo by me, November 2025. |
Is it Hazzard County or Mystic Falls or
Sparta? This town was all three fictional places about moonshine,
rebel flags, Daisy Duke cutoffs, Archie Bunker as a cop and teenage
vampires in television shows, but the real place is Covington,
Georgia; a town of fourteen thousand residents and filled with fine
homes east of Atlanta in Newton County.
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| Get that selfie bro! People wait outside a tour company. Photo by me, November 2025. |
The few times I have stopped in
Covington and not simply passed through on the back roads to
elsewhere I have been surprised at how busy the downtown is with
sightseers. I had no idea people were that interested in taking tours
of places where television shows and movies were filmed. I was
unaware this many people were deeply connected to television shows and that they would track down the real life filming locations and pay for tours. Is it an odd psychological quirk for a hobby I suppose. I might could understand if it were Hollywood, but Covington? I might not understand, but maybe there is good reason for this.
Covington thrives on this
piggyback tourist industry and there is even a museum about these television shows and films. Meanwhile, actual filming in Georgia for movies
and television has taken a downturn as production companies flock to
cheaper locations. The local film business has slowed so much that some of
the studio buildings and land on the bypass were purchased in October by the city and will be converted for municipal uses.
One of the more popular shows filmed here was The Vampire Diaries from 2009 to 2017. Covington was the fictional town of Mystic Falls, which sounds like the name of a cheap wine or car air freshener with a musky scent. I can smell it now coming from a Tesla.
Someone I am kind of related to and was an actor was on the show several times as an extra. I have never seen an episode and do not recognize the names of any of the actors. I assume it must be about vampires writing their secrets in little notebooks that they hide under their coffin pillows.
As I walked I was near one of the major filming locations for the series. Teenage girls with heads down stared at themselves on their
phones. They blocked the sidewalk and I patiently waited until finally I
had to say excuse me like an adult should. The girls were the dreaded phone zombies and not vampires in broad daylight at the corner of College Avenue and East Street. Not to pick on teenagers, but people of all ages too often have lost the basic courtesy that when in public you have to share it with others, that the world does not revolve around you and the faux image of yourself that you present via a smart phone. Real life in public is not your personal television show, a TikTok post or a YouTube channel.
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| The filming location of Lockwood Mansion. Photo by me, November 2025. |
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| The filming location of Lockwood Mansion. Photo by me, November 2025. |
This is Lockwood Mansion, the television den of the Lockwood family of vampires. People were creepily possessive about their spot outside the gates to get their
perfect and
amazing photos. As is my style, I walked through them, took a few cell phone photos and stayed ten seconds. I felt rather silly about the whole moment, but it was a nice house.
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| The county courthouse in Covington as seen in the opening credits of the tv show In The Heat of the Night. |
In the 1980s my mother watched In The Heat of the Night so I saw many episodes of that show. Covington served as Sparta, Mississippi. I was not exactly the target demographic for the show, it was okay. Carroll O'Connor was a big name actor, but I never
said to myself that one day I was going to track down the shooting locations and
take a selfie. And so I did not in 2025.
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| The General Lee and the Duke Boys being chased around the courthouse square in Covington. |
I did watch The Dukes of Hazzard when
it premiered in 1979 and for a couple of seasons after until I lost
interest. My closest friend at the time, a boy I have written about
in my books as the character Robin, could do a perfect “yeehaw”
just like Bo Duke. I was jealous. I was six years old so what did I
know? How many car chases with a couple of good ole' boys can one
watch? Sing it Waylon. Most of my classmates were obsessed with the
show, had model versions of the General Lee car, tee shirts, bedroom posters and talked about the show into high school. This was
about the same time that Cooter, actor Ben Jones, became a Georgia
Congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1988. Among the
more impressionable minds of some of my classmates, some are still
die hard fans as they refuse to outgrow their childhood tastes well
into middle age.
Only the first five episodes of The Dukes of Hazzard were filmed in Covington, Conyers and Atlanta in the fall of 1978. The show thereafter was filmed in California and it never looked the same as the real locations in Georgia. The red clay dirt, dense woods and rural landscapes just cannot be replaced by dusty California. During its seven seasons on CBS, the show was in the top ten for three seasons and peaked at number two in 1980 to 1981. I can still remember how big that show was and how it seemed for a time the show that every kid talked about on the school bus and playground.
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| A stuntman lands a plane on the courthouse square of Covington as locals watched as extras in a Hal Needham directed film. |
A film that seemed to be in perpetual repeat on HBO in the early 1980s was The Cannonball Run (1981). I saw it in the theater and then had it on in the background many times as a kid while I played with my Hotwheels. I did not know it at the time nor would I have cared then either, but parts of the movie were filmed in Covington. In the scene above a stuntman lands a plane that is supposed to be piloted by Burt Reynolds on the courthouse square. The reason for the unexpected landing was that Burt and Dom DeLuise had run out of beer.
The film is a comedy car chase that would certainly be less humorous if made today. The Rod McKuen joke, which was quite funny, would not be understood today by younger generations as you had to be alive in that period to fully understand and much of the other humor might also be unappreciated. The bloopers that ran at the end of the film were great. I miss Dom DeLuise's laugh. I miss Burt Reynolds too.
I remember the late 1970s and early 80s as a very loose, humorous time. Some of my belief resides in the fact I was a kid, but you also see it reflected in the entertainment of the era. It is easy to be misled by people with ulterior motives into believing, especially if you were not there, that the past was some miserable experience. Nor was it perfect either, but people were far less hung up, concerned and socially neutered with bullshit. Compared to the blunt and adversarial categorizations of today, people's sense of place in the world and how to relate to others was more nuanced and also more sophisticated. If you transported anyone under the age of forty today back to 1981 they would be utterly lost as to how to behave, communicate or function; even pumping gas, using a telephone or getting along with people would be problems. People did actually try to get along in public back then at least where I came from. The two greatest losses in my lifetime might be the loss of authentic humor and observing coping skills be supplanted by entitlement. Both of those losses are cross generational.
Twenty minutes east of Covington between there and Madison is Hard Labor Creek State Park. The park was the primary filming location (a few scenes were shot in Atlanta) for the 1980 Paramount Pictures film Little Darlings. The film starred Tatum O'Neal, Kristi McNichol and Matt Dillon. The movie is set at a summer camp and is about two girls, one from a wealthy family and the other from the wrong side of the tracks, who bet to see which one can be the first to lose their virginity. Gasp! Imagine a film like that in 2025, it would offend the sensibilities of the left and the right and would be a box office smash hit as everyone went in secret to watch it.
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| Top Left: The title sequence. The character who Tatum O'Neal played was supposed to live at The Swan House in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. Top Right: The kids are loading up on a parking deck outside the old AJC newspaper HQ in Downtown Atlanta. Second Left: McNichol arrives in Downtown Atlanta. Second Right: Actor Nicolas Coster stands with the now demolished Omni Coliseum behind him and the Omni International which would become the world HQ of CNN known as CNN Center from 1985 until 2023. Bottom: McNichol in Downtown Atlanta. |
I must have watched this film a few dozen times on HBO on repeat as a child. I knew I shared something with McNichol, but I was not sure what at the time. She did some of her best acting in this film.
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| Camp Little Wolf at Hard Labor Creek State Park. Little Darlings 1980. |
There was trouble caused by McNichol during filming of Little Darlings which might have been a glimpse of things ahead for her later in life.
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| People Magazine cover March 31, 1980. |
In a profile of McNichol in
People Magazine during the promotion of the film it was revealed what had happened.
"The movie's crew, as it happened, preferred Tatum's quiet but polite
reserve to Kristy's more impatient and sometimes disdainful moods. In
one moment of boredom, Kristy gunned her car into nearby Madison, Ga.
and, jumping the curb, tore a large "donut" into the grass on the town
green. Confronted by angry police, the embarrassed production company
later apologized (as did Kristy personally). "I'm just relieved that if
my daughter has to be a rebel, she's ruining grass instead of taking
drugs," says Carollyn." A Pad of Her Own in People Magazine March 31, 1980 by Karen G. Jakovich
In 1979, when the movie was filmed, I can believe that a seventeen-year-old McNichol could have gotten away without trouble for doing doughnuts in the middle of sleepy Madison. She was rich and famous, American culture was less celebrity obsessed and not as connected with twenty-four hour news and the inescapable internet. Today, Madison caters to an upscale clientele and news of any sort spreads within minutes on social media and there would be videos from twenty different angles. A mention of the incident in 1980 in People Magazine did not even raise an eyebrow at the time.
McNichol, most known at the time for her role as
Buddy in the 1970s television series Family, was no stranger to
Georgia. She filmed the 1978 made-for-TV movie, Summer of My German Soldier in Crawfordville and Madison. Her 1981 film
costarring Dennis Quaid and Mark Hamill, The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia was shot on location in northwest Georgia and
Chattanooga, Tennessee. 
| Jimmy Carter as Georgia Governor in the 1970s. |
It also probably did not hurt that Georgia was beginning to emerge as a welcome place for filmmakers in the 1970s and 1980s. Burt Reynolds deserved some of the credit behind the push to film movies in the state. He had starred in Deliverance (1972) filmed in the Georgia mountains and advocated for more movies to be made here. Credit also belongs to then Governor Jimmy Carter who had the foresight to create the Georgia Film Office in 1973.
During this time, Georgia was used for Smokey and the Bandit (1977), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), Sharky's Machine (1981), The Cannonball Run (1981), Swamp Girl (1971), Together For Days (1972), The Greatest Gift (1974), Buster & Billie starring a very hot Jan-Michael Vincent (1974), The Longest Yard (1974), Conrack (1974), Cockfighter (1974), Poor Pretty Eddie (1975), Return to Macon County (1975), Moonrunners (1975), Squirm (1976), Gator (1976), Greased Lightning (1977), The Farmer (1977), Scalpel (1977), The Great Bank Hoax (1978), Our Winning Season (1978), John Huston's Wise Blood (1979), Moon In Taurus (1980), City of the Living Dead (1980), The Long Riders (1980), Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones (1980), Cannibal Apocalypse (1980), Breaking Away the television series starring the adorable Shaun Cassidy filmed in Athens (1980), Madhouse (1981), The Four Seasons (1981), Coward of the County (1981), Six Pack which was partly filmed where I grew up in Georgia (1982), The Sender (1982), The Slayer (1982), Murder In Coweta County (1983), The Slugger's Wife (1985), Summer Rental (1985), A Killing Affair (1986), As Summers Die (1986), Manhunter (1986), Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives (1986), The Mosquito Coast starring Harrison Ford and River Phoenix and partially filmed near where I grew up (1986), Foxfire (1987), Made in Heaven (1987), Funland (1987), From A Whisper to a Scream (1987), Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers (1988), Your Mother Wears Combat Boots (1989), Driving Miss Daisy (1989) among others.
Movies and television shows would continue to be made in Georgia in the 1990s. It would be after 2000 when production exploded that Georgia became the Hollywood of the South. In 2016 Georgia had more feature films made here than California. Though Georgia's entertainment industry has begun to wane again in recent years.
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| Kristi McNichol canoes with Matt Dillon in Little Darlings. |
I doubt Little Darlings is part of the film location tour circuit, but the park and its lake where Camp Little Wolf was located still exists. You can get a selfie by the lake, maybe hotwire a bus and sing along to One Way or Another by Blondie.
