HINDSVILLE - A movie is being made about a small town struggling to survive after a new highway is built, diverting traffic around the community.
The movie is called Valley Inn, and the town is called Hindsville.
It’s not exactly fiction.
The number of vehicles traveling through downtown Hindsville dropped 86 percent between 2007 and 2009, when a new, four-lane bypass began providing a more direct route on U.S. 412 from Springdale to Huntsville.
Last year, an average of 750 cars drove down Hindsville’s Main Street every day. In 2007, the number was 6,700, according to the Arkansas Highway and Transportation Department.
Downtown Hindsville is one mile from the bypass in either direction, north or southeast.
“That’s what’s happening in America,” said Kerri Elder, executive producer of Valley Inn. “Everyone is in a hurryto go places faster, shorter, quicker. We’re losing our heritage.”BEGINNINGS Originally from Little Rock, Elder and her sister, Kim Swink, have been working on the movie for four years. Swink, who lives in New York, is the writer and co-director.
Elder and her husband, Chris, have a farm near Hindsville, and Swink would come to visit.
From 2000 to 2005, the sisters dined frequently at the Valley Inn Cafe in downtown Hindsville, where biscuits and gravy was a breakfast specialty. Elder told Swink about the bypass, and it meshed with a screenplay idea Swink already had about a girl trying to sell Christian books door to door.
The movie is a romantic comedy, Elder said.
Jordan Scott of Fayetteville plays Emily, a girl from New Jersey who’s sent to Madison County to begin her career selling books.
“Through a series of misadventures … and her growing friendships with the endearing and often comical local residents, Emily begins to discover what is most valuable in life, at the Valley Inn,” according to the film’s website, valleyinnfilm.com. “… All the characters and plotlines converge at the biggest event of the year, Rodeo of the Ozarks. In the exciting and satisfying climax of Valley Inn, love is found, rodeo queens are crowned and Emily finally learns just how much she didn’t know.”
“She learns that relationships and heritage and caring for one another is more important than making a dollar,” said Elder.
The movie includes some well-known actors, including Joey Lauren Adams and Natalie Canerday, both Arkansas natives.
Scott graduated from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville in May with a theater degree. She grew up moving around with a military family, living in San Diego and Portland, Ore. But grandparents in Springdale helped ground her geographically.
“I knew that was one place I could call home,” Scott said.
After filming is finished for Valley Inn, Scott plans to move to Seattle to pursue her movie career.
“I love that before I move to somewhere else, I get to do a love letter to Arkansas,” she said of Valley Inn.
NOSTALGIA
The “love letter” theme was repeated several times on Wednesday at the set in Hindsville.
Elder described the movie that way. Nelsie Spencer of New York, a co-writer of the screenplay, said it’s a “love letter to small-town America.”
As actors prepared for a funeral scene Wednesday, there was a sense of nostalgia and passion for an earlier, agricultural America.
“It’s heart-breaking that this is happening,” Spencer said of small towns dying. “A lot of people don’t even know it’s happening.”
“You hate to see a town like this dry up,” Elder said. “Progress is not always progress. It’s a relative term.”
The first residents of the Hindsville area, William and John Hinds, arrived from Tennessee in 1832, said Paul Andrews, a local historian. Hindsville has been considered a town since the 1860s.
X Dotson, who has been mayor of Hindsville for more than 20 years, said the town’s population in 2010 was 69, even if the sign still says 75.
Dotson said Hindsville has shifted over the years from being a farming town to a bedroom community for people who work in Fayetteville, Springdale, Rogers and Bentonville.
The new bypass allows Hindsville residents to get to Springdale in 15 minutes without speeding, the mayor said. Springdale is 18 miles to the west, and Huntsville is nine miles to the east.
Dotson, who has lived in Hindsville since 1951, said the bypass was a “good thing.” There wasn’t room to widen the two-lane road to four lanes in the middle of town, he said. Historic buildings line both sides of the street.
“The traffic had to be moved,” Dotson said. “It may have hurt some, but I’m not sure it’s hurt that much.”
Hindsville’s Main Street is also Arkansas 45 and U.S. 412 Business.
THE CAFE
Valley Inn has four filming locations in Hindsville: the Valley Inn Cafe, A.T. Smith Mercantile, an abandoned church and a house. Some filming was also done last week at the Rodeo of the Ozarks in Springdale.
A.T. Smith, 84, said he’s been in Hindsville since 1955. Smith, who owns the mercantile store, is a sponsor and investor in the film.
“I didn’t do it to make money,” he said. “I did it to help the town. Hindsville has been my life. I’ve been here 58 years. I’ve done everything I can to keep Hindsville on the map.”
Smith is also a budding actor, playing himself in the movie.
“I’m going to be the new Clark Gable,” he said. “A bald Clark Gable.”
The limestone rock building that houses the Valley Inn Cafe was built in 1933. It has served as a grocery store, cattle company and bed-and-breakfast. The cafe opened in 1985, said Sheri Carpenter, who worked for three different owners of the cafe.
The filmmakers were excited to learn that the cafe, which closed in September 2010, was reopening this summer.
“This story could have been shot in any small town in America,” Elder said. “But this cafe inspired this story.”
The cafe’s new owners, Sharon and Mackel Evans of Hindsville, had been renovating the place since July 4, 2012. The cafe reopened on June 11, then closed July 2 to allow the crew to film there for a week.
Sharon Evans said she was surprised to hear that a film crew wanted to shoot in her cafe and that a movie would be named after it.
“We were overwhelmed, but we needed the publicity,” she said.
The timing of the movie’s filming and the Valley Inn Cafe reopening was an unusual coincidence, Sharon Evans said.
“When you put God first, I think all the other things come together,” she said. “The main thing was to put jobs back in the Hindsville area.”ARKANSAS TALENT
Elder said shooting in Hindsville should end early this week, then some scenes will be shot at the Little O’ Oprey in West Fork. She expects the film to be finished and in theaters in the spring.
Elder said Kindred Films was formed for the purpose of making movies in Arkansas. About 100 local people are employed in the cast and crew of Valley Inn, and the movie will pump about $250,000 into the local economy, she said.
“We’ve made a big movie on a little budget,” Elder said. “You can only do it if the community helps and local people get behind it. … This area is really,really ready to blossom in the film industry.”
Elder said she doesn’t have any previous experience as a filmmaker, but she’s been financing her son’s films for 20 years. Blake Elder has made several short films and was producer and director of photography for the feature film Five Dates in 2011. He’s also producer and director of photography for Valley Inn.
Chris Spencer, Swink’s husband and co-director of Valley Inn, said he was impressed with the movie talent in Arkansas. About 95 percent of the cast and crew are from Arkansas, he said.
“The level of talent on both sides of the camera in this state is staggering,” he said. “It’s truly amazing. We thought we were going to have to bring people in, but we didn’t.”
Scott said she hopes the movie will help businesses in downtown Hindsville.
Mackel Evans said he thinks the movie will put Hindsville “back on the map.”
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/15/2013