40 Fun Facts About The Wettest County in the World

Which English actor plays Forrest Bondurant, the middle brother rumoured to be indestructible, in the film Lawless?

Tom Hardy got the part only after the film's first financing fell apart in 2010; Ryan Gosling had been attached to play Forrest.

Jack Bondurant, the youngest bootlegging brother in The Wettest County in the World, was author Matt Bondurant's what?

Jack was his grandfather, who lived to 90. Only after Jack's death in 2000 did the family dig up old newspaper reports of the brothers' shootout.

Which American motorsport traces its roots to Prohibition moonshine runners tuning cars to outrun the law?

NASCAR grew out of bootleggers racing their modified cars against each other for pride, and many kept hauling liquor after Prohibition ended in 1933.

In Lawless, which illness kills the supposedly indestructible Forrest Bondurant after he falls into a frozen lake?

Pneumonia does what his enemies could not: Forrest drags himself out of the water after a drunken stumble at a family reunion, then dies of the illness.

Lawless is set in Franklin County, Virginia, but in which other state was the film actually shot?

Georgia stood in for the hills of Prohibition-era Virginia, with the cast living near Atlanta for three months while towns such as Newnan and LaGrange hosted the shoot.

Which author of Winesburg, Ohio is credited with calling Franklin County the wettest county in the world?

Sherwood Anderson reported on the county's 1935 conspiracy trial as a journalist, and Matt Bondurant made him a character who goes looking for the brothers.

Which amendment to the US Constitution ended Prohibition in 1933, though Franklin County's illegal stills kept running?

The Twenty-first is the only amendment that repeals another one, cancelling the Eighteenth, and the only one ratified by state conventions.

Prohibition-era moonshiners risked poisoning their customers with lead by using which car part as a condenser?

A radiator made a cheap condenser for a backwoods still, but the lead in its soldered joints tainted the liquor and could leave drinkers blind.

In The Wettest County in the World, what happens to Forrest Bondurant at the County Line restaurant in 1928?

His throat is cut in a night attack that he somehow survives, and the stories it spawns turn him into a man the county believes cannot be killed.

The prosecutor acquitted in Franklin County's 1935 moonshine trial was a grand-nephew of which Confederate general?

Robert E. Lee's grand-nephew Carter Lee was the county's Commonwealth's Attorney, and he walked free while most of his co-defendants were convicted.

Which American actor, the first person cast in Lawless, plays the youngest Bondurant brother, Jack?

Shia LaBeouf was the only actor who stayed when the project fell apart in 2010, and he helped revive it by sending the script to a future co-star.

American moonshine of the kind made in Franklin County is traditionally distilled from a mash of which grain?

Corn is the American moonshiner's grain, while illicit distillers in Scotland and Ireland traditionally made their clear, unaged whiskey from barley.

In The Wettest County in the World, eldest brother Howard Bondurant is haunted by his service in which conflict?

The Great War left Howard, an ox of a man, besieged by the horrors he had witnessed, while middle brother Forrest became the family's hard-headed businessman.

In The Wettest County in the World, which disease kills the Bondurants' mother and sisters a decade before the story?

The Spanish flu takes their mother and sisters in 1918, a loss the novel imagines scarring all three sons, who are running liquor within ten years.

Which actress plays Maggie Beauford, the former dancer Forrest Bondurant hires as a waitress, in Lawless?

Jessica Chastain agreed to the part before she had read the script, after cinematographer Benoît Delhomme recommended her to the director.

At which European film festival did Lawless premiere in competition in May 2012 to a long standing ovation?

Cannes gave the film a standing ovation of nearly ten minutes, and it competed there for the Palme d'Or.

In Lawless, which business do the Bondurant brothers run as a front for selling their moonshine?

A gas station and restaurant is the brothers' cover, and it is where lawman Charlie Rakes turns up to demand a share of every bootlegger's profits.

Which Black educator and author was born into slavery in Franklin County, Virginia, decades before its moonshine fame?

Booker T. Washington was born on the Burroughs farm near Hale's Ford, was freed during the Civil War, and went on to lead Alabama's Tuskegee Institute.

Franklin County, the setting of The Wettest County in the World, lies in the foothills of which mountain range?

The Blue Ridge foothills hold the county, whose moonshine past is now archived at Ferrum College's Blue Ridge Institute and Museum.

Which Australian singer-songwriter wrote the screenplay and co-composed the score for the 2012 film Lawless?

Nick Cave said much of the novel's most brutal material never reached the screen, and he turned the villain from a country cop into a city one.

Which English actor plays Floyd Banner, the gangster who guns down two federal agents in broad daylight in Lawless?

Gary Oldman's Banner spares Jack once he learns he is a Bondurant, then becomes one of the brothers' regular customers.

Which Australian actor plays Charlie Rakes, the corrupt lawman who hunts the Bondurant brothers in Lawless?

Guy Pearce created the character's hairstyle himself, and the filmmakers reworked Rakes's personality to persuade him to take the role.

In Lawless, former dancer Maggie comes to Franklin County from which big city, and later plans to return there?

Chicago is where Maggie means to go back to, until Forrest talks her into staying and gives her a spare room.

The director of Lawless had earlier filmed The Road, a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by which American author?

Cormac McCarthy is also a writer Matt Bondurant has been compared to, thanks to the dark, violent prose of his moonshine novel.

Prosecutors at Franklin County's 1935 conspiracy trial said bootleggers had cheated the government of millions in what?

Excise taxes on whiskey were at stake: prosecutors said the ring had dodged about $5.5 million of them, so the charge was fraud, not simply making liquor.

In the snowy 1930 shootout that The Wettest County in the World retells, who shot Jack Bondurant and his brother?

A local deputy shot both brothers, who had resisted lawmen trying to skim their whiskey profits, and both men survived.

The climactic shootout of Lawless, filmed at Red Oak Creek, ends with Charlie Rakes fleeing into what structure?

A covered bridge gives the wounded Rakes nowhere to run; the one used for filming was probably built by Horace King, an enslaved bridge builder, about 1840.

Matt Bondurant writes that jars of Franklin County moonshine most often have slices of which fruit floating in them?

Peaches take some of the heat out of the clear whiskey, he explains, and locals simply offer a taste of the fruit by name.

Which Australian director, who also made Depeche Mode music videos, adapted The Wettest County in the World as Lawless?

John Hillcoat was sent the novel by producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher, and liked that these outlaws survive instead of dying in a blaze of glory.

Which Australian actress plays Bertha Minnix, the preacher's daughter courted by Jack Bondurant, in Lawless?

Mia Wasikowska's Bertha is caught by the law when Jack shows off the brothers' hidden stills to her on a day trip.

In Lawless, which mechanically gifted friend of Jack Bondurant builds the brothers' stills and is later killed by Rakes?

Cricket Pate, played by Dane DeHaan, is caught when lawmen ambush the hidden stills, and his death sends Jack racing off to confront Rakes.

The Bondurants of Virginia descend from Jean Pierre Bondurant, a French refugee from which persecuted religious group?

Huguenots fled France after Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, and Jean Pierre Bondurant reached Virginia in 1700.

Which town is the county seat of Franklin County, Virginia, the so-called Moonshine Capital of the World?

Rocky Mount is where Matt Bondurant faced his toughest critics, speaking at the county historical society just as his novel came out.

Which 2005 Western set in the Australian outback did the director and screenwriter of Lawless make together first?

The Proposition was shot around Winton, Queensland, and one Lawless actress admired it so much she took her role before reading the script.

In Lawless, Bertha Minnix, the girl Jack Bondurant courts, is the daughter of a preacher in which church?

Brethren worshippers get an unwelcome guest when Jack turns up drunk at a service, embarrassing himself but catching Bertha's interest.

The Wettest County in the World opens with a symbolic farmyard scene showing the slaughter of which animal?

A sow is butchered in the opening pages, the first of the violent set pieces that one reviewer counted crowding the first 50 pages.

Which weekly magazine ran the Winesburg, Ohio author's report on Franklin County's 1935 moonshine trial?

Liberty ran the article that gave the county its soggy nickname; its author had moved to Southwest Virginia to become a small-town newspaperman.

Which Matt Bondurant novel came out in 2012, the same year Lawless reached cinemas?

The Night Swimmer was his third novel; a decade later he returned to true stories with a book built around the 1900 Galveston hurricane.

Which Australian actor plays Howard, the eldest Bondurant brother who finally kills Charlie Rakes, in Lawless?

Jason Clarke took a role that James Franco had been attached to before the film's original financing collapsed.

Which violinist from the band Dirty Three composed the Lawless score alongside the writer of the Lawless screenplay?

Warren Ellis and his writing partner formed a made-up band, the Bootleggers, to play the film's songs in a raw style rather than polished bluegrass.