Forget Lonely Planet. Here is your “Janet Planet”-inspired guide to the Western Mass.

NORTHAMPTON — For many, the landscape west of Boston and east of the Berkshires is a great unknown, raising questions such as: Where does Western Mass begin? Where does it end? And why should we care?

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker has some ideas. Born in Boston (she lived in Cambridge until age 6), she moved to Amherst, where she spent the remainder of her childhood and graduated from Amherst Regional High School. (Her brother once wrote the police diaries for the Amherst Bulletin, which were “the funniest, the best,” she says.)

Baker’s feature debut, “Janet Planet,” opening in Boston theaters this week, is a meditation on motherhood, childhood and a very specific sense of belonging. Set in the Pioneer Valley during the summer of 1991, it follows a single mother, Janet (Julianne Nicholson), and her 11-year-old daughter, Lacy (Zoe Ziegler), as three visitors come in and out of their lives.

This part of Western Mass. is only a few hours’ drive from Boston, but the film’s press notes describe it as “a world apart” with a “singular and largely unexplored American character.” By evoking this character in cinema, Baker offers an introduction to the region where she grew up.

Here’s an impromptu, not at all complete, “Janet Planet”-inspired guide to the film’s filming locations in the valley, in alphabetical order by town/village.

Amherst

Mount Pollux Conservation Area

“One of the places I was concerned about when I started writing the script was Mount Pollux,” Baker told the Globe, noting that by 1991 the summit “had been reached.” two maple trees at the top, and now there is only one. So it’s like an anachronism in the film.

Ashfield

Double-edged theater

In one scene, Janet and Lucy attend a puppet theater evening in the hills, enchanted by the surreal puppets around them. Double Edge Theater design director Jeremy Louise Eaton made all of the creatures by hand; some had been used in previous productions, while others were created for “Janet Planet”, using recycled materials.

Hadley

Creamy Delights

Pat McCarthy used to travel selling ice cream. “For probably 15 years I attended carnivals in New York City,” she says. Today, she works out of her Creamy Delights trailer on Lawrence Plain Road, across from farm fields (the tobacco was growing in late June, she said Monday), and sells “New York-style” ice cream, made with 10% fat. In the summer, guests sit at a picnic table to enjoy cones, milkshakes, sundaes and swirls in hard chocolate or cherries.

In “Janet Planet,” Lacy gets ice cream while her mother’s old friend, Regina (Sophie Okonedo), works in the cart. “They rented the place,” McCarthy said of the film crew as they worked on their noisy Electro Freeze machine, their hearts frozen from their entire operation. “I said, ‘Well, you can use everything, but you can’t use the machine.’ » Finally, “They hired one of my daughters to do it. . . . She was here to show the star how to make cones.

McCarthy hasn’t seen the film yet, but everyone knows who the real legend is here: his mother, Hilda Gruber, who died last year at the age of 102. Until age 99, Gruber served creamy delights attracting a “big fan club.” ” McCarthy said. What was her mother’s favorite flavor? “Twist, I guess.” She loved ice cream – she didn’t care about its flavor.

Hampshire Shopping Center

Located on Route 9 and inaugurated in 1978, it was just sold for the modest sum of $7 million at an auction. Its other features include a roller skating rink and a JCPenney store, making it a believable backdrop for the film’s early ’90s setting.

Leverett

Janet and Lacy’s house in the woods

“We really saw the natural sounds of western Massachusetts as the score,” Baker said in the press notes, explaining how his sound designer visited Leverett early on “and set up a microphone in the forest surrounding the house where we filmed” to make the field. records. Baker joined nextdoor.com before finding the house, later stating that the discovery “made me feel like the whole movie was open to me.” It’s in the middle of a lush, jungle-like forest, and I immediately got a photo of Lacy moving around inside alone.

Check out the New England Peace Pagoda, also in Leverett.

Northampton

Mural “The History of Women in Northampton from 1600 to 1980”

Recently restored, the “The History of Women in Northampton 1600-1980” mural by the Hestia Art Collective depicts nearly four centuries of women’s contributions to the city in everything from arts and industry to politics and at home, and features portraits of abolitionists. Sojourner Truth, activist Frances Crowe, and Smith College founder Sophia Smith, among others. In the film, he appears in a scene where Regina and Lacy are sitting in the car talking about Janet’s story.

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You can contact Brooke Hauser at [email protected]. Follow her @brookehauser.