SMILE hits home as it was filmed in the summer of 1974 when I graduated from high school, in Sonoma County, where Santa Rosa is. It is an accurate representation of Santa Rosa, 1974. I know many of the people in it, and my friends white 62 Chevy Impala is used. I can point out to many faces in the audience during the pageant, including an old high school history teacher. For me now it is a ghost town movie, as the current Santa Rosa has grown 3 times the size. The town you see in the film has been developed out of existence, and now seems like a dream. SMILE is based on the Junior Miss Pageant, which use to be held at The Veteran's Memorial, where the filmed pageant takes place. Mark Ritchie coached the paid actors well, as I could believe they were like local folks acting out as Santa Rosans. As a Cultural Anthropology study Smile is a gem. It is a time capsule to 1970's Santa Rosa. Another film to see is Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt. It too takes place in Santa Rosa around 1942, and has many points of location gone by the time Smile was filmed. Thorton Wilder wrote the Hitchcock screenplay for Santa Rosa, as he saw it as the best example of a American small town. The same can be said about Smile, but now Santa Rosa is an edge city.