Parts of one HBO feature movie will be shot in Montana, it was announced this week, while state film office officials are still awaiting word on another HBO project that could bring much more publicity to the state's grandeur.

Next month, around 75 movie professionals will descend on Ennis for more than a week of filming "Taking Chance," the story of a marine lieutenant colonel traveling across the country to return the body of Chance Phelps, a Marine killed in Iraq, to his hometown in Wyoming.

Kevin Bacon stars in the movie. The Bozeman airport and Virginia City cemetery will also be used for scenes. The majority of "Taking Chance" will be filmed in New Jersey.

Meanwhile, production of an HBO series on the Lewis and Clark Expedition may be inching closer to reality. An online Lewis and Clark newsletter reported last month that the miniseries, to be based on the Stephen Ambrose book "Undaunted Courage," is in production and scheduled to air in 2008. Reportedly Edward Norton and Brad Pitt will coproduce the series and star as the explorers.

Sten Iverson of the Montana Film Office, though, said a quick call to National Geographic Films confirmed that the series is still being written and isn't yet in production. Further, it's still unknown where the movie will be made, though with so much of the Lewis and Clark journey taking place in Montana, filming here would seem to be a natural.

"As you probably have noticed on this project, it is taking a long time to get started," Iverson told me in an e-mail. "Just for fun I looked up the first call I took on the project, and it was in April of 1998."

The last two legislatures have enacted and enhanced tax breaks and other incentives to draw the movie industry to Montana, on the theory that films showing the state's scenery can be as effective as paid advertising.

Press Tour: Hoping to raise the city's profile across the country, the Helena Convention & Visitors Bureau last month hosted four travel writers for a "familiarization" tour called "Distinctly Helena."

Writers from Northwest Woman magazine in Spokane, Wash., and World Travel News Service out of Sacramento, Calif., were joined by a pair of freelance travel writers for a three-day tour that touched on all the Queen City has to offer from a visitor's perspective. The Archie Bray Foundation, Cathedral of St. Helena, Old Governor's Mansion and the Capitol were all on the itinerary, along with cowboy entertainment by Bruce Anfinson and a storytelling tour by historian Ellen Baumler.

CVB head Mike Mergenthaler said the chamber will monitor publications for stories that come from the writers' visit.

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