Mobile, Alabama, in popular culture

Mobile, Alabama features prominently in baseball lore, with more players in Hall of Fame than any city except New York and Los Angeles. The list includes Hank Aaron, Ozzie Smith, and Satchel Paige. Singer Jimmy Buffett is another famous Mobilian, as is Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, Inc.
Mobile is occasionally featured in movies and in literature, such as HBO's The Pacific miniseries, the film Driving Miss Daisy and the novel Forrest Gump. Mobile is also the setting for one of the most famous lines of the American Civil War. During the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864, Admiral David Farragut is said to have uttered: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"
Mobile, Alabama was originally settled at Twenty-seven Mile Bluff, and is credited with the beginning of the annual celebration of Mardi Gras started by Nicholas Langlois in 1703. Mobile was then the Capitol of Louisiana. Mardi Gras was later annually celebrated in New Orleans in 1709. Joe Cain started the modern celebration of Mardi Gras in Mobile in 1866. (6)ref-CNN Fact Check.
Film
Many scenes in director Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind were filmed in Mobile—in the Bankhead Tunnel, in a large hangar at the Brookley Aeroplex (alien mothership arrival) and some exterior shots near the hangar, and in a West Mobile suburb (exteriors at the Neary residence). Nearby Bay Minette stood in for Moorcroft, Wyoming in the rail-station evacuation scene.
The opening scenes of The Final Destination were filmed at Mobile International Speedway, in nearby Irvington, Alabama
Most of the Steven Seagal movie Under Siege (co-starring Tommy Lee Jones) was filmed on the , which is docked on Mobile Bay at Battleship Memorial Park and open to the public.
In the movie Driving Miss Daisy, Miss Daisy (Jessica Tandy) has her driver Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman) drive her to her brother's birthday party in Mobile.
Much of the feature films Love Liza (starring Philip Seymour Hoffman), and Hometown Legend (starring Terry O'Quinn), and the TV movie Sacrifice (starring Michael Madsen and Diane Farr) were shot in Mobile.
Brian Bosworth's movie Stone Cold also featured scenes shot in Mobile.
In Con Air Nicolas Cage's character briefly returned to his wife in Mobile in the beginning of the movie.
In a 2010 episode ("The Double Blind") of Leverage the Mobile city council building is featured in an aerial shot. The building is supposed to represent the offices of a medical research company. In the scene the downtown Holiday Inn and the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception are among the building featured.
In the 2010 movie Red, the characters visit Mobile.
Many scenes in HBO's The Pacific are set in Mobile, since the series is partially based on the book With the Old Breed by Mobile native Eugene Sledge.
The movie Tough Luck was partially filmed in Mobile. The movie starred Armand Assante, Norman Reedus, and Dagmara Dominczyk. The carnival scenes and the restaurant scene were filmed in Mobile. The restaurant scene was filmed in the restaurant The Pillars. The movie was originally to be named Grift but ended up being named Tough Luck and was released straight to video in 2003.
The 2014 movie Rage, starring Nicolas Cage and Danny Glover, was filmed in the downtown area of Mobile from June 8 to July 16, 2013.
Literature
* Mobile native Eugene Walter celebrated Mobile in his fiction and non-fiction. His Love You Good, See You Later (1964) is set in the bayou country near Mobile.
* Henry Miller's essay, "My Dream of Mobile," is in his book, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (New Directions, 1945).
* Early portions of the novel Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford are set in Mobile.
* In Winston Groom's novel Forrest Gump, Forrest's home town is Mobile, as opposed to Greenbow, Alabama in the film.
* Jack Kerley's Carson Ryder crime novels are set in Mobile.
* Gabriel García Márquez's "The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor" begins at Mobile, where the main character's ship, the Colombian Navy A.R.C Caldas, was undergoing repairs.
*Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye contains a lengthy description of how being raised in Mobile, among other Southern cities, informs one's attitudes. "Mobile girls" are ascribed a passage and several characteristics such as being "narrow, tall, and still."
Music
Mobile is mentioned in the following songs:
* "Alabama Gulf Coast" by Sunset Avenue
* "Alabama Sundown" recorded by Dolly Parton, written by Dave Kirby, Danny Morrison
* "Bloody 98" by Blue Mountain
* "Brand New Deal in Mobile" by Joe Liggins and the Honeydrippers
* "Crazy Cajun Cake Walk Band" covered by Robert Palmer, written by Jim Ford, Lolly Vegas, Pat Vegas
* "Guitar Man" by singer/songwriter Jerry Reed covered by Elvis Presley
* "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" by Cher
* "Hard Luck Story" by Whiskeytown
* "Jump on It" (remix) by Sir Mix-a-Lot
* "The New Workout Plan" by Kanye West
* "Let It Rock" by Chuck Berry
* "" performed by Mel McDaniel, written by Chuck Berry
* "Let's Get This Paper" by Rich Boy
* "Midnight in Montgomery" by Alan Jackson
* "Minyan Man" by Shlock Rock
* "Mobile" by Marcia Ball
* "Mobile" written by R. Wells/D. Holt, performed by Julius La Rosa among others
* "Mobile Bay" by Johnny Cash
* "Mobile Boogie" by The Delmore Brothers covered by Hank Williams, Jr.
* "The New World" by X
* "On Mobile Bay" - by Neil Moret, Charles N. Daniels and Earl C. Jones
* "Out of Alabama" by Cole Deggs & The Lonesome
* "Saxophones" by Jimmy Buffett
* "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" by Bob Dylan
* "The Mobile Line", as performed by Jim Kweskin & The Jug Band
* "The Shake" by Neal McCoy
* "A Southern Thing" by Better Than Ezra
* "Anywhere But Here" by Brice Long, covered by Chris Cagle
* "Stars Fell on Alabama" by Frank Perkins and Mitchell Parish, recorded by the Guy Lombardo orchestra, Jimmy Buffett, and others.
* "Stars on the Water" written by Rodney Crowell, later performed by Jimmy Buffett
* "Twenty-Nine Miles From Mobile" by Charlie Daniels
* "About A Bruise" by Iron & Wine
* "People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul" by James Brown
Other Notable Mentions:
The break-out single of Montgomery-based rapper Chika, titled "High Rises", was written shortly after the rapper dropped out of The University of South Alabama.
Other notables
Mobile gained some Internet notoriety for a leprechaun video that circulated around St. Patrick's Day in 2006.

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