This is (f*cking) Hollywood!

Where can you find a 29-year-old psychology student, a doctor who survived a plane accident and got lost in an island crowded with weird people, the most handsome psychopath-maker of snuff movies in the Spanish movie industry and the last King of Scotland who won an Oscar as a male starring role?



It must be a very special place, like the next landmark where the President of the United States is gonna be killed in public, unleashing unimaginable consequences all over the world. And that place cannot be other than Salamanca.

That's why this ancient, small, quiet town got frozen last week for some hours when Matthew Fox, Eduardo Noriega and Forest Whitaker landed for a short visit motivated by the world premiere of the movie 'Vantage Point', a Hollywood thriller in which action supposedly takes place in Salamanca, shooting of the President (of the USA, of course) and huge explosions included. Dennis Quaid, William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver are also featured in the movie but they didn't come -tough, Sigourney Weaver had already stayed in Salamanca about 16 years ago for the shooting of the Ridley Scott's movie '1492: Conquest of Paradise'. A public appearance of the movie stars with the director at the Town Hall balcony at the Plaza Mayor was announced for 11 am. Afterwards, the stars came down and spent about thirty minutes with the crowd who had been waiting and cheering for them all morning long. Everybody who happened to be in the Plaza at that time joined the crowd and yelled loudly wishing to get an autograph from Forest or be kissed by Eduardo or Matthew. I was there, too, and despite I wasn't kissed or autographed, I tried to get my own image of the day I met an Oscar winner in the Plaza Mayor.



(Excuse the poor quality of the picture, I had to use my cellphone)

The poster of the movie and some other pics of the premiere, taken from Flickr:




The funniest of it all is that the movie wasn't actually shot in Salamanca but in a real-size cardboard model built ah-hoc in Mexico. Reasons for that are that doing it in the real Plaza would imply to close it to public access for three months; which seems impossible given the Plaza is the true heart of the city... Below, a sight of the cardboard replica and the incredible image of Matthew Fox in a Local Police uniform... Notice the Salamanca coat of arms in his chest and shoulder =D



Finally, the trailer of the movie... So, now you know where to go if you want to see a President being shot and a Plaza blown up. Is this Hollywood? Nope: this is (f*cking) Salamanca!