I’m sure you’ve heard about the train derailment in Palestine, Ohio where a toxic cloud formed and people had to be moved away from the incident.
It bears eerie similarities to the events that transpired in Noah Baumbach’s “White Noise,” starring Adam Driver, about an Ohio family whose lives change after a cataclysmic train accident casts a cloud of chemical waste over the town.
This “Airborne Toxic Event” forces a massive evacuation, which leads to a major traffic jam on the highway. Driver’s Jack drives to a gas station to refill his car, where he is inadvertently exposed to the cloud.
Filming on “White Noise” took place at several locations in Ohio, including Palestine. Residents from that small town were used as extras. Palestine residents are literally re-living the plot of that film.
One of those residents, Ben Ratner, told People "talk about art imitating life.” In “White Noise,” the 37-year-old played a character fleeing the toxic chemical cloud.
"This is such a scary situation. And you can just about drive yourself crazy thinking about how uncanny the similarities are between what's happening now and in that movie."
He also told CNN he tried to re-watch the movie a few days ago, but had to turn it off, "All of a sudden, it hit too close to home," he said. “The first half of the movie is all almost exactly what’s going on here.”