Iain Duncan writes:
"_Was_ was written by Geoff Ryman.  I would certainly recommend it to
anyone with an interest in the way that specific places are realised in
film (in this case _The Wizard of Oz_)."
 
At the risk of spinning off of the original inquiry/thread, another book
that tries to actualize film places and people is SUSPECTS by David Thomson,
which offers a dour perspective on post WWII American life, playing off
of themes and characters in various films.
 
SPOILER?
 
 
At the end, the narrator turns out to be Mary Bailey from IT'S A WONDERFUL
LIFE, who has become (if memory serves) owner of a grand tourist resort
bought by Charles Foster Kane's mother with that $50,000/year she and
her husband got from Thatcher.  The resort itself is the hotel in the
Rockies that was the setting for the novel and film of THE SHINING!
(I may be conflating events, but you get the drift.)
 
It does err seriously in trying to make its case about the violent heart of
Middle America by placing Bedford Falls in the midwest, when in the film it
is clearly in upstate New York (probably in the Finger Lakes area).
 
--Don Larsson, Mankato State U., MN