Casting agents coming to Appalachia in search of `The Real Beverly Hillbillies'

Friday, September 20th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

PIKEVILLE, Ky. (AP) _ WANTED: Extended family from deep in the Appalachian backwoods, unfamiliar with big-city life. Must be willing to load up the truck and move to Beverly. Hills, that is.

Casting agents from the CBS reality series ``The Real Beverly Hillbillies'' plan to hold open auditions in eastern Kentucky next month as part of an effort across the rural South to find real-life counterparts of the fictional Clampett clan.

``We're looking for people who have country smarts, but maybe not so much sophistication,'' said casting agent Ken Billings, who has put Pikeville, Hazard and Harlan among the possible audition locales.

But don't expect a Clampett-like welcome, even in a region comfortable enough with its heritage to stage an annual Hillbilly Days Festival.

Pure, bubblin' crude is what some locals already think of the show's premise, which takes simple mountain folk, drops them into a luxurious mansion and lets the cameras roll.

``They're just going to be relying on a tired, old, worn-out stereotype about life in the rural South,'' said Ewell Balltrip, head of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission. ``The result will be to perpetuate this myth of the 'Beverly Hillbillies' image, which is not representative at all today.''

E-mail petitions seeking to block the show are circulating and teachers at some schools in the mountain region are having their students write protest letters to CBS.

``Don't represent us as stupid,'' pleaded Susie Davis, president of the Kentucky Black Lung Association, which helps coal miners apply for government benefits. ``The mountain people are very smart people. They're proud people. They're good neighbors. Don't make us out to be something we're not.''

Billings, among the casting agents scouring the hills of Arkansas, West Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky, said the reality series could be an effective way to dispel old stereotypes.

``We want to find families that are interesting, and also smart,'' he said. ``We're not looking for the Hollywood stereotype of a hillbilly. We don't want people who are barefoot and toothless. We're just looking for a family that loves each other, and that America will fall in love with.''

Hazard Mayor Bill Gorman, for one, isn't buying it. He has a feeling he knows what the show really wants. ``What they're looking for is somebody who is uniquely dumb.''

Nor are officials in Arkansas especially pleased. State economic director Jim Pickens last month complained the show ``wouldn't help the image'' of Arkansas in the business world.

The original ``Beverly Hillbillies,'' about a poor mountaineer who became rich when he struck oil on his mountain property, ran from 1962 until 1971. At one time, it was television's No. 1 program, attracting up to 60 million viewers weekly.

Balltrip said sitcoms like ``The Beverly Hillbillies'' and ``Green Acres'' _ also the premise for a new reality show from Fox _ did nothing but make a mockery of life in the rural South and Appalachia.

``I know that there will be people who will think we are especially sensitive,'' he said. ``The type of images I feel will be portrayed will not do anything to attract industry to this region. People simply do not invest in the economies of backwoods places.''

For the ``Green Acres'' reality show, producers are looking for a rich family willing to move from the big city to the boondocks.

Some here said television producers may be disappointed to find out that people in the hills of Appalachia like to go at malls, surf the Internet and play video games just like everyone else.

``I don't think anybody from Appalachia would have any trouble living in California,'' said Pikeville city manager Kenny Blackburn. ``I'm sure there are plenty of people from eastern Kentucky living out there now.''