For the fictional Florida retirees in Ron Howard's 1985 film Cocoon, the extraordinary came from outer space when aliens turned a swimming pool into a fountain of youth. For St. Petersburg, the extraordinary came from Hollywood, when the little movie with an emerging director arrived for 11 weeks of filming, and put the burberry city in the spotlight. Call it typecasting; the city's reputation as "God's waiting room" burberry had been sealed years before with a Johnny Carson joke. St. Petersburg in the early 1980s was a city of lawn bowling and shuffleboard courts, where retirees spent final days in rickety recreation. After its debut on June 21, 1985, Cocoon became Academy Award winning confirmation of that image. Then something else unexpected happened. Like the movie's cosmically rejuvenated heroes, St. Petersburg grew younger. Games played then by seniors evolved into multigenerational pastimes. God waits longer than ever. Twenty five years ago, Cocoon burberry was a retirement community's coup. Today, it's much burberry more. It's a cinematic time capsule, an artifact of old landmarks and a few regrets. This weekend marks the 25th anniversary of St. Petersburg's closeup. The St. Petersburg Times collected memories of Cocoon in telephone interviews with people who made it happen. A burberry producer named Lili Fini Zanuck saw something in the story and paid $2,500 for it, developing it into the $17 million project that would be her filmmaking debut. They're disappointed when the house is rented to tourists, and astonished that the visitors are actually aliens in human form.