"Train Dreams" filming begins in Tekoa

TEKOA — Tekoa is the set for a ride through history as filming for a movie titled “Train Dreams,” was underway as of Wednesday, May 8.

The film is an adaptation of Denis Johnson’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated novella about a man named Robert Grainer, who worked a day laborer in the American west at the beginning of the 20th century.

The set will use two locations in Tekoa that has been completely renovated to look like the time period of the American West, including The Empire Theater and a block of Henkle Street.

Tekoa Clerk Treasurer Eliza Vans-Teague said that they working on the theatre on Monday, May 6, and had finished remaking the old bank building into a general store called “The Mercantile” owned by Jim Lee.

“They chose the theatre, because it’s still historic,” Vans-Teague said, “It’s pretty close to the right time period.”

The crew will film for two days, having started at Henkle Street on Wednesday, May 8, and finishing Thursday, May 9.

The film will feature actors Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones.

“It’s really fun and exciting for the whole city to have something like this happen here,” Vans-Teague said, adding that the people of Tekoa are just glad that the filmmakers chose their little town.

Vans-Teague said that Tekoa really became a city because of the train activity that happened there at one point hosting five different lines. “It harkens back to our past,” she said, “even though that is not the reason why they chose us.”

The story-line of the film follows the character Grainier through five decades from the 1920’s to the 1960’s, where he lives in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, in the early part of his life, and then moves to the Spokane area.

The filmmakers were drawn to The Empire Theater location to depict a theater in Spokane during the 1960’s.