Where in Texas is Dillon supposed to be? - Friday Night Lights (2006) Discussion

[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

They don't really tell us in the show but if you look here on IMDB they say the filming location is Georgetown, TX. It's about an hour north of Austin on Interstate 35. If you look at MapQuest or Google Map. You can even see the football field.

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[–] rainbow26 9 years ago

True, but I doubt Dillon is supposed to be only an hour from Austin considering Coach Taylor moving to Austin in Season 1 was considered such a big deal to Tami and Julie.

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[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

I didn't say that's where the town is. Nobody in the series states exactly where it is. It should really be farther than that. They even show him taking a plane back to see his newborn baby from TMU.

That's just the filming location in real life.

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[–] aggiemom-68702 9 years ago

Dillon, Tx is supposed to be Odessa, Texas. There's a few references throughout the series about West Texas and the Permian Basin.
it is loosely based on Odessa Permian's football team.

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[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

^THIS^

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[–] tukai 9 years ago

I think it was mentioned they were west central texas about 2 hours from Austin.

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[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

Isn't that pretty much what "aggiemom-68702" said?

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[–] aggiemom-68702 9 years ago

Odessa to Austin is 5.5 hours. Texas is a BIG place. Lol
I cracked up during the episode when they drive to College Stsation -it's almost 7 hours from Odessa. Ha!
Odessa Permian's mascot is the panthers, same as Dillon.
Although it's loosely based on Odessa, I'm surprised they portrayed it as such a small town. Odessa is not small.
One episode they laughingly say 5000 people are in the stands--it looked like 75. Lol
A very good show, just finished it. Not too keen on how it ended.

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[–] rainbow26 9 years ago

I don't think Dillon is supposed to be THAT small either. In Season 1, a lot of the characters hadn't really crossed paths at all up to that point. That wouldn't be the case in a tiny town. I think Dillon is supposed to be more of a small city.

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[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

Aloha,

My guess is that it's about 12,000 people. That is a small city. My town growing up in part was in a town that size. One High School, one Junior High and about 5 elementary schools. Only 1 hospital, 5 Fire Stations for a very large area with the nearby Nebraska farmland.

1/3rd of the kids were farm kids. We had a drive-in and lively weekends. Living there in my High School years was kind of nice. We didn't have to worry about all the crap the inner-city kids had to deal with. Even in the late '70,s.

It was Nebraska so a decent education was pretty much a given.

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[–] aggiemom-68702 9 years ago

Odessa in the late 80's was a 5-A school (largest classification in Texas). A few years ago Texas changed its classification numbers , 6A is now the largest classification and Odessa is in this division. Odessa is a mid size city (population over 100,000), not a small town. If you look at the Odessa Permian school website, their football program has 1 varsity team, 2 Jvs and 2 freshmen teams. It's a huge school system!
The movie, Friday Night Lights shows Ratcliff Stadium, it's huge-- certainly not the dinky stadium shown in the tv series ( that looks like a 1A or 2A stadium in my opinion).

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[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

I don't think this show was supposed to be about Odessa. They surely would have said it was if it indeed was.

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If there's a way to screw something up, the "O'Commie regime" will find it EVERY SINGLE TIME!! Only 179 more days left!

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[–] QueenJackieB 9 years ago

More likely that they wouldn't state it for legal complications, much like in film when they imply a brand is Pepsi but only use the colors/hint.

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[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

If this was supposed to be about Odessa why is there only one (or two) High Schools in such a huge city?

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If there's a way to screw something up, the "O'Commie regime" will find it EVERY SINGLE TIME!! Only 178 more days left!

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[–] QueenJackieB 9 years ago

For writing purposes. That's like asking why do we hardly ever see people showing or peeing on tv.

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[–] whjones79-1 9 years ago

Whatever trips your trigger my friend.

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[–] faulknerster 9 years ago

Representing a real town doesn't requite any legalities. And I doubt the show is representing Odessa. Jason Katims didn't seem to have much of a connection with the book or even the movie. He seemed to be aiming towards vague "small southern town". The book and the show are twenty years apart timeline wise. It seemed he took the FNL template and went into a different direction. This isn't an adaptation or an update so much as an "inspired by". As far as where Dillon is at- of course, the show was shot in and on the outskirts of Austin, and Austin is mentioned quite a few times in the series. So, "not too far away from Austin" would be my answer. But when creating a fictional town television writers tend to leave the exact locale up to question for a multitude of reasons.

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[–] predarat 9 years ago

I thought it might be an hour or two away from the Dallas/FTW area but if its the Odessa area that would squash that theory lol.

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