'Gone Girl' filming hits downtown

Adam Vogler snapped this shot of Ben Affleck and David Fincher working at the shooting location downtown.

In an earlier blog post we wrote about how the old Socials at Themis and North Spanish streets was being transformed into The Bar, the watering hole in the "Gone Girl" story owned by Ben Affleck's character Nick Dunne and his sister.

The transformation is complete, apparently, since Friday night it was the scene of some major filming with none other than Affleck himself. Of course, dozens of locals also stopped to spectate, sitting on the Common Pleas Courthouse terraces to catch a glimpse of Hollywood in action.

While film crews have been in Cape Girardeau for weeks working on the 20th Century Fox movie based on the bestselling book of the same name, Friday night's work was by far the most publicly visible.

We put 30 photos in a gallery. Click here to see it.

We'd be remiss without giving a special shout-out to the Southeast Missourian's own IT director Brad Hollerbach, who's front and center in photo 20. He's working as an extra.

-- Matt Sanders