Paper Trails

'Whatever' is focus for filmmaker

PAINTING THE TOWN BLUE: Cabot native Dan Waymack, who splits his time between Little Rock and Chicago with his Little Rock-based film production company, Waymack & Crew, recently filmed an entire town -- Crested Butte, Colo. -- as it was taken over for a weekend and painted blue for a Bud Light commercial. Anheuser-Busch paid the city $500,000 for the use of it and invited more than 2,000 in a contest. Singer Vanilla Ice manned an ice cream truck and KC and the Sunshine Band and others performed.

"They put a fence around the entire city," says Waymack. "You couldn't get in without an armband."

He was hired by a Chicago-based ad agency for which he's previously shot commercials for the U.S. Army and Allstate Insurance.

"This is, by far, the biggest thing I've ever done," Waymack says. The 30-second ad, part of Budweiser's "Up for Whatever" campaign, begins with the fictional Mayor of Whatever, U.S.A., at his desk in the middle of a blue-hued road.

"We shot for two days, each day from 6 a.m. until around 1 a.m. the next day," he says.

The biggest challenge?

"Because of legal issues we couldn't show anyone's faces," explains Waymack. "That was a little tough."

MAKING MUSIC: Former White Hall resident Ben Roberts and his wife, Emily, who is from South Dakota, live in Nashville and perform Americana music with their duo, Carolina Story. They are gaining fame, performing on the Grand Ole Opry and having their latest album, Chapter Two, reach No. 13 on the Americana chart.

LAWYERING UP: Michelle Fernald, 49, and a University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Law graduate, was recently included in Texas Lawyer's feature "Winning Women" as one of the state's top 20 female lawyers. Fernald is deputy chief of the U.S. attorney's office for the Western District of Texas, in Austin. Since 2012, she's served as co-counsel in the investigation and prosecution of a Mexican cartel's drug trafficking, money-laundering and horse-racing operations. The defendants, members of Los Zetas, are being prosecuted in the case of United States v. Miguel Angel Trevino Morales.

FAMILIAR FACE: Longtime KTHV, Channel 11, news anchor Liz Massey, who left the Little Rock station nearly a year ago, began a new career late last week as director of communications for the Cabot School District.

STAR BRIGHT: The Arkansas Walk of Fame in Hot Springs gains four new inductees on Oct. 18. They include actress and director Joey Lauren Adams of North Little Rock, actress Tess Harper of Mammoth Spring, artist George Hunt, formerly of Malvern and Hot Springs, and the late Nick McDonald. McDonald, who lived in Hot Springs for 25 years and was a Dallas police officer for 25 years, arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy's accused assassin, in the Texas Theater on Nov. 22, 1963.

Contact Linda S. Haymes at (501) 399-3636 or lhaymes@arkansasonline.com

SundayMonday on 09/21/2014

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