Going home can always be a bit weird. You run into businesses from when you were a kid. You bump into people from your old days in the neighborhood. But you not
During the winter of 1976, you couldn’t escape the return of
King Kong. Producer Dino De Laurentiis had gone out to produce the biggest indie budget film for the biggest star Hollywood had ever created. Kong was on the back of comic books. Posters of Kong straddling the World Trade Center towers while clutching Jessica Lange in one hand and a destroyed fighter get in the other papered towns. I still remember the poster being up for months in the window of a dry cleaner in Fayetteville, NC. The TV ads popped up on every show. The drink glasses were at Burger Chef. 7-Eleven had special Slurpee cups. Dino had to get everyone hyped up since Paramount was releasing the movie on 1,200 screens. This was in an era when a major film debuted on much less and built up over time.