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Things I Miss About Home….Great Falls, Montana
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Posted by: greatfallsgirl | October 17, 2009

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

thunderbolt2This was a pretty good movie filmed in Great Falls and area during the summer of 1973.  I lived outside of Fort Benton on the ranch then and used to drive to Great Falls all the time with my friends (I just got my driver’s license that summer).  They filmed a short segment in Fort Benton on the riverfront…one of my friends got Jeff Bridges to autograph her white pants.  Clint Eastwood is so tall!  At the end of the movie, George Kennedy crashes his car through the windows at the Paris downtown…I hung around there quite a bit with my aunt Betty when I was a kid.

You can watch the movie on the internet here.

Here is a synopsis:

As much an eccentric character study as a road movie, Michael Cimino‘s directorial debut follows the adventures of a quartet of misfits in their life of crime. Retired thief Thunderbolt (Clint Eastwood) and sweet drifter Lightfoot (Jeff Bridges) meet cute when Thunderbolt jumps into Lightfoot’s stolen car to escape a gunman. The pair embarks on an oddball journey to get Thunderbolt’s loot from an old robbery before his former associates, the sadistic Red (George Kennedy) and cretinous Goody (Geoffrey Lewis), get to it first, but all four are too late; the one-room schoolhouse hiding place has apparently vanished. So instead, the four play house and work legit jobs while they plot to rob the same place Thunderbolt and Red hit before. Although the plan goes awry, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot discover that they may still have succeeded-or so they think. As the easy-going mediator between the two, Eastwood‘s Thunderbolt was a move away from his tough cop-westerner image; his audience accepted this then-atypical performance enough to turn Thunderbolt and Lightfoot into a moderate hit. Bridges received his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, but Cimino turned down a subsequent deal with Eastwood, moving instead to his artistic peak with The Deer Hunter (1978) and career nadir with Heaven’s Gate (1980).

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Posted in Great Falls, Montana | Tags: movies

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Responses

  1. Randy's avatar

    Hello,

    I have been searching and searching for filming locations of this film… I have found the Fort Benton locations, the Used Car lot location, Lightfoot’s death(ending) location, and a couple of others that are still around. I need help finding where the opening Church scene was. The Montana Film office says it was filmed near Cascade Montana, but that is very, very vague. I am looking for an exact spot. They also say the church was torn down after filming. The DVD liner notes say the church was in Hobson, Montana… if you can help with this it would be greatly appreciated. e-mail me at [email protected] thanks!

    By: Randy on August 27, 2010 at 1:05 pm

    Reply

    • Jeff Hooker's avatar

      I seem to remember the church being built and later disappearing along the interstate to Helena. It would have been near the Dearborn exit after Cascade. It was visible from the highway. The exit road crossed the river and it sat on the north/west side of the river. It was a long time ago, so I could be wrong.

      By: Jeff Hooker on February 23, 2014 at 7:50 pm

      Reply

  2. Unknown's avatar

    […] of the characters in the movie Thunderbolt and Lightfoot had a job driving a cart as a cover, so I got these shots from the movie.  In this scene, George […]

    By: Frosty « Things I Miss About Home….Great Falls, Montana on May 26, 2011 at 3:50 pm

    Reply

  3. greatfallsgirl's avatar

    My only complaint about the movie is that they portrayed people from Montana more like southern redneck hicks than what true Montanans are really like.

    By: greatfallsgirl on May 26, 2011 at 7:48 pm

    Reply

  4. Steve Mintyala's avatar

    I do believe the church may have been located in Danvers, Montana.

    By: Steve Mintyala on October 11, 2013 at 4:48 pm

    Reply

  5. Rockets GMRandy's avatar

    The church was the St. John’s Lutheran Church in Hobson, Montana. It was bought and dismantled in 1981 and was to be relocated all the way across the state to Troy, Montana. This however did not happen. The job proved to be too big and the church unfortunately was scrapped. This was confirmed to me by the Montana Lutheran Synod.

    The Danver’s church looks similar but is not the church.

    It was the school house that was built specially for the movie on a rest stop off of I-15. A newer building with restrooms and such sits where it was now.

    By: Rockets GMRandy on July 6, 2014 at 9:28 pm

    Reply

  6. familyguyseason1-11.tumblr.com's avatar

    Magnificent web site. Lots of helpful information here. I am sending it to a few buddies ans additionally sharing in delicious. And certainly, thank you for your sweat!

    By: familyguyseason1-11.tumblr.com on January 13, 2017 at 8:12 am

    Reply

  7. Edward Fagan's avatar

    I have been trying to find the Warsaw School, from the movie, only clue i can find is that it is near the Dearborn Fire Department.

    By: Edward Fagan on March 2, 2017 at 5:19 pm

    Reply

  8. Old Films's avatar

    The one room school house was built for the film and then taken down at the rest stop on I15 south, just after exit 240. Here’s a great video that shows many of the film’s locations. The school house comes up at the 12 minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbQRIPUtCYU

    By: Old Films on May 6, 2017 at 4:55 am

    Reply

  9. Dusty's avatar

    The Church was moved to the Rest Area Near Exit 240 at Dearborn, Montana. It was then moved to exit 240 and was turned into a bar that my grandma worked at.

    By: Dusty on April 2, 2018 at 12:07 am

    Reply

  10. Timothy Dietrich's avatar

    I appreciate all the comments, although there is conflicting comments. Being on location & what became of the certain buildings, etc. Thanks to all though, i’m watching & recording the movie right now.

    By: Timothy Dietrich on January 16, 2019 at 2:07 am

    Reply

  11. J D Turner's avatar

    Long story short on the location of the church, it was at what is now the southwest corner of 5th St S & 3rd Ave E, Hobson, MT.

    By: J D Turner on January 22, 2022 at 5:02 am

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