THREE RIVERS AREA — It’s not quite living the dream, but it’s getting closer.
Filmmaker Josh Baxter of Hot Springs has watched his film Injury Slight … Please Advise grow from a pipe-dream idea for a Hollywood blockbuster to a legitimate documentary that tells the story of an American hero.
The film is taking another step in its journey this weekend with a theatrical release beginning Friday at Market Street Cinema in Little Rock. Audiences in Hot Springs might remember the documentary from its 2008 screening at the Hot SpringsDocumentary Film Festival, but the movie has undergone a few changes in its evolution since then.
“What screened at Hot Springs was about half done,” Baxter said, noting that little of the special effects that bring the film’s aerialsequences to life were done at the time of the 2008 festival.
The film has been on a long journey to finally get a theatrical release, and the journey is far from done. Baxter, who grew up in Jacksonville, has shown Injury Slight … Please Advise at various festivals and private screenings across the country. He has contacted several cable networks about airing the film either by itself or as part of a television show, but to no avail. He does have a DVD distribution deal with VanGuard, which will make the film available around the first of the year.
The documentary has resonated with audiences, especially people who have a connection to World War II. The film tells the story of Col. Charles O’Sullivan, an American fighter pilot who was shot down over the jungles of New Guinea during the second world war. O’Sullivan spent 30 days hiking through the jungle, trying to avoid Japanese soldiers and, at one point,fighting his way out of a camp of headhunting natives.
O’Sullivan later served as a commander at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville and lived in central Arkansas until recently, when he moved to Indiana to be closer to family following the death of his wife.
O’Sullivan’s story is one of perseverance, a trait Baxter has had to bring to the process of making and distributing thefilm. Many of the challenges that accompanied making the film are documented in a 35-minute “making-of ” featurette that will screen at Market Street Cinema following the 80-minute documentary. One of the biggest challenges early on was designing and building the props for the film, a task Baxter took on with the help of his wife, Suzie, who served as the film’s costume designer; and producer Ed Talley.
Many of the film’s props are on display at Market Street, including a replica of the cockpit and fuselage of O’Sullivan’s P-38 Lightning. Baxter spent a lot of time attuned to the details of representing the cockpit as accurately as possible. Apparently, it worked.
“When Col. O’Sullivan saw it, his only complaint was that it looked too clean,” Baxter said.
Baxter said that when he was moving the fuselage on a trailer and traveling through Gurdon, a stranger stopped to talk to him about it and recognized the model as a P-38, even without the plane’s signature wings and tail.
As for constructing those, Baxter thought the fuselage and cockpit were enough.
“By the time I got done with the fuselage itself, I said, ‘Yeah, that’s enough,’” Baxter said. “That’s why we’ve got computers.”
Baxter has screened the film at various locations around central Arkansas for the past two years, includingthe Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock and the Jacksonville Museum of Military History.
“He’s been out here twice to show the upgraded versions of the movie,” said DannaKay Duggar, director of the museum in Jacksonville.
The Jacksonville museum is lending its display on O’Sullivan to Baxter to show off at Market Street, where the film will run through Thursday, Aug. 5.
A filmmakers panel discussion is planned for Tuesday following the 7 p.m. screening at Market Street.
From Market Street, Baxter hopes to screen the film in other theaters in towns that have connections to the story. He wants to screen the film in Indiana, near O’Sullivan and his family, and in places like Burbank, Calif., where the P-38 was built.
But if Injury Slight … Please Advise never wins big awards or becomes a national hit, Baxter will still be able to appreciate the work he and his crew have done.
“I realize this isn’t a Steven Spielberg kind of film, but it’s gratifying to see this take us (he and the film’s crew) in a different direction,” he said. “I think this is a good example of what we can do.”
For showtimes of Injury Slight … Please Advise at Market Street Cinema, visit www.marketstreetcinema.net.
- jlemaster@ arkansasonline.com
Three Rivers, Pages 52 on 07/29/2010