MovieChat Forums > Friday Night Lights (2004) Discussion > "Small town"

"Small town"

posted 9 years ago by TheSonomaDude_Returns
2 replies | jump to latest

Is Hollywood's explanation for "small town" just any city with under a million people? The Midland-Odessa area has a total of about 285,000 people, hardly a small town I'd say. If your football team competes in a 6A conference, then you are NOT a small town high school. Hollywood does this *beep* a lot in films; recently they called Bakersfield, CA a "small town" in San Andreas. Yah, because a city of 560,000 people is small...maybe compared to Bejing. This movie is great, but it's not a "small town" football movie. For small town, check Possums.

[–] Dinodak 9 years ago

Odessa is still considered today a "small city."

The population in 1988 was just at 90,000 people. Definitely not a tiny blip on a map, but far from large in metropolitan terms.

[–] jpowers4667 9 years ago

When you specifically look at the population for Odessa, it's consistently been around 100K. It fluctuates based on oil booms and busts, but as someone who grew up there and lived there for 22 years, I assure you...it IS a small town.

Despite what you may think, Odessa and Midland ARE two different towns.