GVSU students to produce feature film

A feature-length film based on a true crime story will be shot in West Michigan as Grand Valley State University's Summer Film Project for 2007.

Established in 1995, the GVSU Summer Film Project has offered junior and senior students in the School of Communications an opportunity to work side-by-side with professionals to produce a 30-minute film in 12 weeks. Now in its 13th year, the Summer Film Project 2007 will produce its first-ever feature-length motion picture.

Four professionals will lead an all-student film crew. Director (John) Harper Philbin is on faculty at Grand Valley. Director of Photography Jack Anderson will come once again from Hollywood to work on the project. Sabra Temple is a production designer from Grand Rapids, and alumnus John Otterbacher, from Chicago is co-producer.

More than 60 students will be working on the film, gaining unbeatable experience prior to graduating. The film is a nonprofit venture, half funded by the university with the other half sought through charitable donations. Panavision Hollywood is loaning Grand Valley a high-end filming camera. Kodak is offering a discount on film stock, and Film Craft Lab, in Farmington Hills, Mich., is donating film processing. Many other local businesses, alumni, and parents have donated to the project. All proceeds from the exhibition and sale of the finished film will support the film program and its students.

The screenplay, "To Live and Die in Dixie," was written by distinguished novelist John Dufresne, a creative writing professor at Florida International University, and Donald Papy, a lawyer in Miami. Dufresne's screenplay, "Freezer Jesus," was produced in 2002, after it won the project's screenwriting contest that year. This year's script is a true crime story, part courtroom drama, about a murder on a college campus.

It is based on incidents surrounding a murder on a southern college campus where Dufresne was teaching in 1986. He also wrote about it in the short story, "Based on a True Story," in his newest book, "Johnny Too Bad." Like many of Dufresne's stories, it is set in the South with a full cast of unforgettable characters.

"It involves the women's basketball team - a love triangle with two of the players and the killer, who is the boyfriend of one of the women," said Dufresne. "There were so many bizarre details. His first lawyer was struck by lightning and killed, his alibi came from the parents of one of the women he killed, then he copped a plea bargain and only served minimal time in prison."

Frances Parker, who worked for the town's mayor, was obsessed with illuminating the truth in all its gritty detail. Dufresne said she went to the trial and took notes to study the case herself.

"She then spent something like $40,000 of her own money hiring detectives," said Dufresne. "She really was the person with all the information and who came to me and asked if I'd write about it."

Dufresne also gives high marks to Philbin, the film's director. "He's incredibly intelligent, meticulous, and really passionate about the project," said Dufresne. "He gives us notes all the time about things he's caught in the script and he's right, and right again and again."

"I'm hoping to come to Grand Rapids during the shooting for at least week this summer," said Dufresne, who might also play a cameo role as a professor. "I hope I can be persuasive."

Philbin notes that some bits of plot or character were fictionalized for dramatic purposes, but most of the script is based on facts. "In the screenplay, all the real names and places were changed-- to protect the innocent, as they say."

In March, John Otterbacher and Philbin visited Frances Parker at her home in Louisiana. "She was very hospitable and talked with us for hours, showed us around to the murder site, the courtroom where the trial took place, and so on," said Philbin. "Fran knows all the details and characters surrounding the real events, but in our film, SHE's the central character-- a woman determined to see that justice is done."

Casting auditions for professional actors were held in Detroit and Chicago in April. Grand Rapids auditions are May 9 and 10. Principal filming begins June 15 in West Michigan.

For more information about the film contact John Harper Philbin at (616) 331- 3668 or visit www.gvsu.edu/filmvideo .

For audition information, contact student Scott Sheppard, 2nd assistant director, at (989) 823-4198.