Best Places to Film in New Hampshire: Anywhere, Everywhere

Photo courtesy of Bruce Luetters

The best place to shoot in New Hampshire is in New Hampshire. Everywhere you aim a camera is sublimely picturesque and inviting — and, unlike certain states that have actual tax incentives (ahem, ahem), we don’t have a movie crew on every corner, meaning that if a filmmaker is kind and courteous, professional and inclusive, it’s not impossible to be invited to put that invitingness to good use, often for the exorbitant fee of a sense of pride and ownership. While it’s true that film fans may forever associate the Granite State, or me, if they’re lonely, with Squam Lake and “On Golden Pond,” I’ve also shot two ultra-super-ridiculously-low-budget movies in other parts of the state, from my own backyard in the Lakes Region to several surrounding towns, earning the full cooperation of the police and fire departments in Bristol and Holderness, Laconia and New Hampton. I’ve doubled parts of Plymouth for New York City in my film “Time and Charges” and made an alley in Laconia pass for one in Manhattan. In “Heavenly Angle,” I turned a Laconia office building into an L.A. bungalow and even pulled off making carefully selected skyline and river shots resemble Paris.

Next up for me: “Parallel America,” which I’ll shoot in several grange halls and town houses in Jaffrey and Meredith Center and up in Milan and down on the Seacoast, where, in partnership with numerous business owners, homeowners and, again, the exceedingly generous support of the police department, I’ll make Portsmouth look like, of all things, Portsmouth. We live in the most photogenic paradise in the world. We have mountains and lakes, villages and cities, 18 miles of ocean and endless vistas and possibilities and boundlessly talented actors and musicians, eager extras and crew members and welcoming innkeepers and ample housing and mostly manageable traffic and four seasons. Please don’t tell anyone.

Ernest Thompson has won an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Writers Guild Award and Broadway Drama Guild Award for best play. His work has been nominated for a Tony, an Emmy and a British Academy Award. His more than 35 plays have been seen in theaters around the world. The most enduring, “On Golden Pond,” has been translated into 30 languages, Arabic the newest, and played in more than 40 countries on six continents.