Oregon Public Broadcasting

Movie theaters across Oregon and the country are scheduling midnight premieres Thursday to accommodate rabid local fans of a vampire saga called “Twilight”.  

The best-selling series of romance-thriller novels is set in the small and rainy hamlet of Forks, Washington on the Olympic Peninsula. 

Despite its remoteness, the town has fast become a pilgrimage destination for readers from here and around the world.  Correspondent Tom Banse reports.

In Forks, Washington, fans of the vampire saga are called “Twilighters.”  In case one hasn’t chatted your ear off about it, you should know they’re smitten by the star-crossed romance of a studly vampire and his human girlfriend, Bella.

“Twilight” stars Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart filmed not in the novel’s setting of Forks, but at the west end of the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. - Copyright Summit Entertainment

Sound: [movie clip] Actress Stewart “I know what you are.  Your skin is pale white and ice cold.  You don’t go out into the sunlight."

Actor Pattinson: "Say it.  Say it out loud"

Stewart: "Vampire.”

Twilight novelist Stephenie Meyer settled her fictional vampire clan in Washington’s Olympic rainforest based on an internet query.  She searched for the wettest place in America.  Forks was her answer. 

Meyer lives in Arizona and never visited the town before finishing the book.

Her reasonably accurate description of a damp place where the sun rarely shines doesn’t seem that favorable for tourism.  But ‘Twilight’ fans like Nicole Warren want their visit to be vampire friendly.

Nicole Warren: “Please let it at least be cloudy. [Why?] Because in the books, it rains and is cloudy a lot.”

The Spokane woman starts her Twilight pilgrimage at the Forks visitor information center.  That’s where Chamber of Commerce director Marcia Bingham provides the Forks version of a Hollywood map to the stars.

Marcia Bingham: “...the places named in the book are the hospital.  And you know that there’s....”

This sign is often the first photo stop on a “Twilight” pilgrimage to Forks. Take an audio slideshow tour of Forks

Until recently, this two-stoplight town was better known as a way station to the nearby national park or as a battlefield in the war over the spotted owl in the 1990’s.

Marcia Bingham: “These are the restaurants that sell Twilight-themed food.  Like a ‘Bella Burger’ or ‘Bellasagna’ with Ed bread....”

Now Bingham’s visitor center guest book is signed by people from all over the world who share one common obsession.

Marcia Bingham: “It’s a phenomenal gift. I can’t thank Stephenie enough. I can’t imagine that she had any idea of how enormous this would grow and how big a following it would be.”

A colleague of Bingham’s started a van tour of Twilight settings around Forks.  The tours are sold out through January.

Among the Twilight “fang club,” perhaps none is more devoted than 46-year-old Annette Bruno-Root.  She’s a social worker from urban Vancouver, Washington.  But she uprooted her husband and five children and moved to Forks this fall. 

The family opened a souvenir shop called “Dazzled by Twilight.”

Annette Bruno-Root: “I think it’s really fun to be with my kids, live something all day long that I absolutely love and get to talk to amazing people from everywhere.  It’s wonderful to see kids reading.  And it’s wonderful to see kids and their parents who wouldn’t ordinarily do some together, doing something together. And everyone’s into it.  It’s great.”

A few townsfolk sound like they’re sick of the Twilight phenomenon.  They post anonymous complaints on the Internet about being overrun by what they call “freaks.”

But the great majority appear to be taking the novel twist in stride. 

Teacher Sherry Schaaf lives next door to a pilgrimage stop.  Every few minutes, another car pulls up on her otherwise quiet street. 

People climb out to take pictures of the supposed home of the love struck heroine, Bella.

Sherry Schaaf: “It’s really neat for these people to come and experience what Forks is really like.  There’s a lot of negative press about Forks, just because it’s a logging community and there’s this whole mindset about what it’s like to live here, being such a rainy, gray place.  We have a beautiful town and we have wonderful people.”

Schaaf chuckles though at how some younger fans appear to blur fantasy and reality.

Sherry Schaaf: “They really want to know how long Bella has lived here. I just want to say, ‘It’s a house! It’s a normal family. You know, it’s all fiction!’”

Ironically, the movie version won’t light up a silver screen in Forks.  The town’s only theater closed down well over a decade ago.

Online:

Twilight: The movie

Forks, WA Chamber of Commerce

Official homepage of author Stephenie Meyer