Quick hits: Plans for Screen Gems and screen legend stamp move ahead

Screen Gems makes plan for 'dream stage'
"EUE Screen Gems Studios officially announced Tuesday the building of the East Coast's largest film and television production stage," said the Wilmington Star-News.

"Some news of the construction was reported two months ago, but this was the company's first official detailed announcement about the Wilmington project.

" 'We've submitted the plans, applied for permits, begun preliminary clearing and ordered materials. This is our dream stage,' said Chris Cooney, COO and president of EUE Screen Gems Ltd., in a press release.

"Completion of the new 'dream stage' is expected by early spring 2009. It will be a column-less 37,500-square-foot expanse with a grid height of 45 feet and dimensions of 150 feet by 250 feet. The building's footprint will take up 39,005 square feet.

"The stage will include a 60- by 60-foot indoor tank with a depth of 10.5 feet, making it one of the largest and deepest indoor production tanks in North America. Depth creates more opportunities for underwater filming. ..."

Plans for Ava Gardner stamp moving head
"U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge announced today that a U.S. Postal Service committee is considering an Ava Gardner commemorative postage stamp," according to the News & Observer.

" 'Ava Gardner was a big-time star who never forgot her small-town North Carolina roots,' he said. 'In addition to being a world-famous actress, she was a patriot who performed for our troops and she worked tirelessly in the fight against cancer.'

"Gardner, who died in 1990, was a native of Johnston County.

"The postal service has a 'citizen’s stamp advisory committee' that reviews recommendations for commemorative stamps and makes recommendations to the postmaster general.

"If approved by the committee, the stamp would not be available until at least 2010. ..."

New site designed to help N.C. film industry

The North Carolina Film Office is revamping its website, director Aaron Syrett said, to make it easier for the film industry to learn about the state. The site also should make it easier for locals to find film-related jobs.

Syrett said his group wants to become more "friendly to Hollywood."

The new site, which should be online by August, will feature a list of locations that may appeal to film executives and a directory of industry professionals and their resumes. The site will also "enable the central office to present one package of locations to a producer rather than delegate those duties to the five regional film commissions across the state."

North Carolina has quite a solid history of making movies. Some famous flicks shot in the state include "Bull Durham," "Last of the Mohicans," "Firestarter," "Nell" and parts of "Forrest Gump.

It was 20 years ago today ...

OK, so not exactly today. But it has been 20 years since the movie "Bull Durham" made Durham, N.C., a popular culture trivia answer.

ESPN.com and ESPN The Magazine have dubbed this "Bull Durham Week" in honor of the anniversary. Among the highlights: an interview with writer/director Ron Shelton and interviews with Tim Robbins and Kevin Costner.

Both of those men have returned to Durham in honor of the anniversary. Costner revealed a Durham-focused anecdote from the days of filming.

"... Anyway, there's a guy in the film who was really enjoying himself in town when we weren't shooting, and may have had a good time out at the bars with a lady or two on the young side. Anyway, Ronny decides to get a local cop to come out and walk onto the set while we're in the middle of shooting a game scene and confront the guy, cuff him and arrest him for what would be, in the cop's words, having a little too much fun with an underage girl, unbeknownst to him. I mean, this is Durham and nobody's checking ID's. So the cops are basically there arresting the guy, and you can see the horror. Everybody else just loves this and it makes me almost want to throw up. I wanted to go hide in the dugout, and I'm dying. But the kid, the guy, he's just seriously watching his entire life crumble in front of him and it's in front of everybody! I'm pretty sure I snapped a bit and had to sort of reveal the prank, just for my own sanity. My stomach is just f**ing turning! And I mean, the thing is, Ronny had gotten actual cops to do this. They were taking him off the field. For all intents, this was no joke. I couldn't take the suffering. "

And Robbins is asked if "Bull Durham" is the greatest sports movie of all time.

"Yea, I mean I am biased, but I'd have to say yes, it is," he answers wisely.

Clooney, Zellweger to promote movie in N.C.

"The Facts of Life" aside, George Clooney typically doesn't do bad projects. So I'm giving "Leatherheads" the benefit of the doubt.

The movie, about an early-20th century football team, was filmed in Greensboro, Salisbury and other parts of the Carolinas, opens April 14. Clooney, along with co-star Renee Zellweger, will sally forth to the "Old North State" to promote the film.

The Charlotte Observer reported Tuesday that Clooney, who directed and stars in the movie, and Zellweger will be in Salisbury on March 26 and in Greenville, S.C., the next day.

"In Salisbury, Clooney and Zellweger will appear about 11 a.m. at the Historic Salisbury Station as part of what they're calling the 'Whistle Stop Express.' In Greenville, S.C., they'll appear about 11 a.m. at The Westin Poinsett Hotel," says the Greensboro News & Record.

Quick hits: Gothic, Southern Christmas and the death of a film pioneer

(Note: This may be the last post 'til after Christmas. Happy Holidays, everyone!)

Haven Kimmel gets spiritual in 'Used World'
"Haven Kimmel - who spent a chunk of this autumn as a visiting writer at the University of North Carolina Wilmington - is one of those cheerful boundary-hoppers who's hard to pin down," writes Currents.

"She remains, of course, Indiana's greatest literary light since Kurt Vonnegut, having immortalized her Hoosier girlhood in the best-sellers A Girl Named Zippy and She Got Up Off the Couch.

"For most of the past decade, though, she's lived in the Durham area, where she served a literary apprenticeship under Lee Smith at N.C. State, and her fiction often seems closer to Flannery O'Connor or Eudora Welty than to the great Midwesterners.

"This is especially true of her latest novel The Used World. Although set in Indiana, it's stuffed with literary props of the Gothic tradition, and it's as "Christ-haunted" (to borrow Flannery O'Connor's famous phrase for the South) as anything O'Connor ever wrote. ..."

Studio head Frank Capra Jr. dies
"Frank Capra Jr., the son of 'It's A Wonderful Life' director Frank Capra who followed his father into the movie business and helped build the largest television and movie studio on the East Coast, has died. He was 73," says the Associated Press.

"Capra Jr. died Wednesday night at a hospital in Philadelphia, said Bill Vassar, the executive vice president of Wilmington-based EUE Screen Gems Studios, of which Capra was president. Vassar said Capra died following a long fight with prostate cancer, which had spread over the past several months.

" 'With his Hollywood pedigree and extensive experience as a producer, Frank was the perfect ambassador to Hollywood,' Chris Cooney, chief operating officer of EUE Screen Gems, said in a statement. 'He will be missed as a friend and a colleague.'

"Under Capra's leadership, EUE Screen Gems' credits include several major motion pictures, including '28 Days,' 'The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,' 'Domestic Disturbance,' 'Black Knight' and 'A Walk to Remember.'

"... He discovered North Carolina in 1983 when searching for a home to burn down for the filming of 'Firestarter,' the Stephen King horror movie starring a young Drew Barrymore. The scene was shot at the Orton Plantation in Winnabow, and afterward Capra persuaded executive producer Dino De Laurentiis to build a studio facility in Wilmington.

"De Laurentiis eventually sold the facility, which again changed hands in 1997, when the Cooney family bought the studios and installed Capra as president. The studio has since grown into the nation's largest film production center east of California.

" 'He brings a certain cachet to the studio that would not be there and wasn't there before he came,' said Bill Arnold, the former director of the N.C. Film Office, said in an interview earlier this year. 'When Frank came on, I think it assumed a larger profile just because of Frank's name.' ..."

'Dirty Dancing' still resonates with Lake Lure

The setting for the movie was supposed to be the Catskills in New York. But 20 years later, fans of the movie "Dirty Dancing" continue to flock (make a pilgrimage?) to the actual spot(s) where the movie was filmed: the beautiful area around Lake Lure, N.C.

Yours truly wrote a couple of years ago for a trade publication about Lake Lure: there "are still fans of the movies [including "Last of the Mohicans"] that associate the setting with the films. And while those fans may be disappointed to find out that the employee cabins from 'Dirty Dancing' are nowhere to be found, they will not go away completely disappointed for Lake Lure remains an appealing, beautiful setting."

To whit: "Nearly every day, someone makes a pilgrimage to the old boys camp here where much of the movie 'Dirty Dancing' was filmed," writes the Asheville Citizen-Times.

" 'They say they just want to see the site,' said John Cloud, who is developing the property into a luxury residential community. 'I’m just stunned. It takes work on their part to find out (the locations) where the movie was shot.'"

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Lionsgate will screen a 20th anniversary edition of the movie that includes interviews with the people who made the film and why it’s made such an impact on American pop culture. The film will be shown only those two days and only in 300 theaters nationwide.

Sometimes called “the ‘Star Wars’ for girls,” the romantic movie is more popular than the two lead actors it made stars out of — Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

Grey played innocent 17-year-old Frances “Baby” Houseman, who in the summer of 1963 vacations with her parents in the Catskills. She meets Johnny Castle (played by Swayze), the hotel dance instructor, and is mesmerized by him, as well as his dance style. She soon becomes his pupil in dance and falls in love.