Wichita: The Next Hollywood?

Every now and again my hometown of Wichita, Kansas is featured in a movie. Perhaps with my upcoming high school reunion I was feeling a sense of nostalgia. So I rented a recent Wichita movie-- The Ice Harvest. Before I delve into a review, I'd like to note there are many conceptions (pre and mis) about Wichita. To clear some of these up: is Wichita a cow town? No. I suppose it used to be, but now it is a metropolis of half a million. There is industry and commerce. There are neighborhood swimming pools. There is a Starbucks. And yes, there are farms, but they are outside the city proper. Next...Is Wichita a red state? Yes! Conservative Christians run rampant. But there are at least some liberals...although many of us have moved out. Does Kansas have tornados? Yes...but houses with girls named Dorothy rarely land on witches.
The Wizard of Oz fixed Kansas (if not Wichita) in the minds of cineophiles decades ago, but alas, the current crop of movie offerings are nearly forgettable. Ten years ago Tim Burton directed Mars Attacks! It was filmed in Wichita and featured a big cast of A list actors including Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Danny DeVito...I remember the call for extras and the excitement of the filming. In the end, the movie, clearly about martians, caused Wichitans to further defend themselves. It was a strange flop, now remembered only by cult fanatics.
Several years later, The Big Kahuna featuring Kevin Spacey and (again!) Danny DeVito was released. Although it got fair reviews, in the end was a character study of several salesmen and took place entirely in a hotel suite. I wasn't impressed.
Two duds, but the passing of the years must have made me forget that, so The Ice Harvest was sent to me by Netflix. A film noir starring John Cusick and Billy Bob Thornton, The Ice Harvest promised a dark comedy reminiscent of Bad Santa. It did take place at Christmas, and it was dark...but there were few funny moments. The premise: two guys embezzle 2 million from a local gangster. They need to get out of town alive with the money. It's a basic story line, but I never really understood the motivation, or why the two guys went in on it together. There is a twist at the end, and I did keep watching, but there was little to indicate this movie needed to take place in Wichita, save for a running riddle, "As Wichita Falls, so does Wichita Fall." In the extras commentary, the filmmakers joke, "who knows what Wichita looks like? No one. So we shot in suburban Chicago." They argued that for this movie, the set need be only any suburban landscape from which the leads needed to flee...still, if they had consulted anyone from Wichita, they would have been informed that no one goes to Citgo as a convenience store. You'd go to Quicktrip.
I guess Wichita doesn't lend itself to glamour the way L.A., New York, London or Paris do. Perhaps that's why the house in the Wizard of Oz was trying to get away.