Newspaper article about my SC Film Exhibit
Posted on January 21st, 2008
This article appeared on the Columbia SC newspaper The State on Sunday, January 20, 2008.
Bringing Hollywood home: State Museum exhibit shows off South Carolina’s role in the movies By NATASHA DERRICK - nderrick@thestate.com
A bridge spanning the Cooper River, a Southern town square, and the marshlands of Hunting Island State Park are common sights to South Carolinians. But in the hands of a Hollywood director, those Palmetto State backdrops can be transformed into a bridge in Connecticut, a Civil War hospital and the jungles of Vietnam. Over the past century, countless directors have used the state’s varied landscapes to tell a story. The State Museum has gathered props, posters and information on those movies for its new exhibit, “Hollywood Comes to South Carolina: A Century of Filmmaking in the Palmetto State.”
“We were looking for a big exhibit with a different take on what we’ve done before,” said curator Fritz Hamer. “Not many people know about the ins and outs of filmmaking or that so many movies were filmed here.”
The idea for the exhibit came to author, filmmaker and film historian Frank Thompson two years ago. Thompson, a Belton native, was living in Hollywood and relishing the completion of his first film exhibit, at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum in Austin. “It just occurred to me that the same thing could be good for my home state,” Thompson said. He presented the idea to the State Museum, which agreed to make him a guest curator on the project. Then the real work began as Thompson mined his sources and forged new connections to find the objects.
“It was a little more of an uphill struggle to find the artifacts and the people who had them for this exhibit,” he said. “I pretty much just went out after everything I could.” Thompson called studios, private collectors and film directors. Early in the project, he contacted director and Columbia native Julian Adams about including his film “The Last Confederate: The Story of Robert Adams.” The relationship proved fruitful when Adams offered a wealth of items from the film as well as more contacts in Los Angeles. Costumes worn by the main characters, books, guns, posters, scripts and more from “The Last Confederate” are on display. When Thompson couldn’t find a contact for a film, he would go to the locations where the films were shot and just look around. That is how he found one of the props from “Radio,” the Cuba Gooding Jr. and Ed Harris film about the relationship between James Robert “Radio” Kennedy and T.L. Hanna High School football coach Harold Jones.
“It was just this incredibly ugly, papier-mache bee that we found in the back of an antique store in Walterboro,” he said.
With the help of museum staff members and others, Thompson amassed an eclectic collection of movie memorabilia.
Some of the premier pieces include a functioning, life-size model of the Confederate submarine Hunley from the 1999 film; the gallows used in Mel Gibson’s “The Patriot” and an authentic 1921 firetruck from Chester that was used in the TV miniseries “Chiefs,” starring Charlton Heston.
“Accommodating these larger pieces was tricky,” said the museum’s director of exhibits, Michael Fey. The staff drove the firetruck into the loading dock and then maneuvered it using car dollies, which allowed them to move the truck sideways and into place. Fey also shifted a lot of things to find a space tall enough to accommodate the gallows.
To Thompson’s disappointment, some films eluded him during his search. He couldn’t find anything from one of the state’s most famous films, “The Prince of Tides.” “I wrote Barbra Streisand several times but to no answer,” he said. “The studio didn’t have anything, either.”
About half the exhibit’s items came from Hollywood studios. It was more difficult to acquire props from newer films like “The Notebook” or “Cold Mountain,” because such items aren’t saved as they were in the past. “You’re almost better off going to the studios for films in the ’40s and ’50s,” Thompson said. “There is no place where these things are kept, because smaller production companies shoot the films and they are distributed through the big studios.” After production, the props often are sold or just disappear.
Thompson got all the items on display for “The Patriot” from other sources, like historical societies and private collectors. One of the rifles from the movie was loaned by Adams’ father, Weston, who bought it in an auction.
GETTING SOME HELP
Even though many interesting items are on display, “Hollywood Comes to South Carolina” is more than just a venue for movie artifacts. It also teaches the process of filmmaking and the history of the industry in the state.
“The exhibit addresses the films shot in South Carolina but also films made about South Carolina. My film, ‘The Last Confederate,’ falls into both categories,” Adams said.
Fey and Hamer called on Karla Berry and Jodi Salter of USC’s media department to research and create video and interactive displays. Students in the fall-semester honors course put together more than 10 displays for the exhibit.
“The students went to Anderson and spent the day interviewing the real Radio, his coach and the woman who wrote the original story,” Berry said. “They also went to one of the last remaining drive-ins in the state, The Big Mo in Monetta.”
Senior Baxter Engle put a different spin on his project by creating an interactive program that allows visitors to learn about the role of musical scores in films.
Engle’s program lets visitors manipulate the sound effects and musical scores on a short animation film. “Music can alter the mood or the setting,” he said. “They can bring up the different scenes by themselves and give it a comedic or dramatic mood.”
Among the other interactive displays in the exhibit is a car in front of a green screen, which shows how many driving scenes are filmed. There also is a small screening room where more films by the students are shown.
BIG BUSINESS
In South Carolina, filmmaking is a curiosity, a taste of big-time Hollywood in our backyard. But it’s not just about sightings of Kevin Bacon (“Death Sentence”) and George Clooney (the upcoming football comedy “Leatherheads”); the film industry also is big business.
“We estimated over $67 million in 2006 from feature films, TV shows, print ads and music videos,” said Jeff Monks, commissioner of the S.C. Film Commission. “The standard is that 33 percent of the production’s budget is spent locally.” That includes salaries to in-state crews and the purchase of supplies and equipment. Monks, who joined the commission in 1989, and other staff members stay busy making contacts and traveling to L.A. and New York to persuade producers to use the Palmetto State in their films.
Last year and 2006 were big years for the state, with “Death Sentence” filming in Columbia, “Leatherheads” in Spartanburg and Greenville, and the Lifetime series “Army Wives” in Charleston. Nearly all the movie posters in the exhibit came right off the walls at the commission. “We were enthusiastic about this exhibit,” Monks said. “There are a lot of good stories to tell about the number of films, and now TV series, that are shooting here. I don’t think people realize how many films were shot here. People will be amazed by the many projects that have used South Carolina as their backdrop.”
Reach Derrick at (803) 771-8640.