Today Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton and some of her aides took a trip up to Columbus, Wis. to watch the last day of filming in that town of Michael Mann's Public Enemies. The Lt. Governor's Director of Communications, Robert Chappell was kind enough to send us this picture of Lt. Governor Lawton being presented the Key to Columbus by Mayor Nancy Osterhaus. This is the first time Columbus has ever presented a key to the city and they did so recognizing Lawton in recognition of Lawton being the driving force to get the film tax incentives passed that brought the film to Wisconsin. Chappell said the Lt. Governor also met with director Michael Mann as well as some other senior-level crew people and the owner of the local lumberyard where most of the set-building material had been purchased, "which is great, because our main interest in the whole film thing is the economic impact."

Chappell also spent some time watching the action. He reports, "We watched Johnny Depp drive a swerving 1930-ish Ford up and down the street for a while, and later got to see his body double doing basically the same thing, all on rubber 'cobblestones.'"

Meanwhile, a number of Madisonians headed down to Darlington, Wis. on Wednesday to join in the filming of a courtroom scene. The information reported back to us by a Dane101 contributor who was on the set could be considered spoiler material so we are going to employ invisotext. If you don't want to know what was filmed in Darlington, don't highlight the following block.

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Filming took roughly eight hours to capture a two or three minute long scene. It was a trial for John Dillinger, but Depp pretty much didn't have any lines. It involved a prosecutor and a defendant going back and forth while Depp sat there. There was a woman there, one of Dillinger's girls. Depp didn't interact with the audience much. He was ushered in during each take and then right back out. Invisotext off.