Arkansas’ big-screen moment

LITTLE ROCK — Ivividly remember the excitement that surrounded the filming of the 1973 movie White Lightning. My grandparents lived in Benton, and key parts of the movie starring Burt Reynolds were being shot in Saline County. Reynolds had attracted nationwide attention the previous year for his breakout role in the movie Deliverance and his nude photo spread in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan.

While Arkansas has never been considered a key part of the movie industry, the state has had its fair share of time in the spotlight. It’s likely that some of that colorful history will be discussed March 21-24 when aspiring filmmakers, actors and others gather atop Petit Jean Mountain for the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute’s second annual film forum.

The forum’s artistic director is Robert Walden, who happens to be married to Christy Carpenter, the institute’s chief executive officer. Walden, a three-time Emmy nominee for his portrayal of reporter Joe Rossi on the television series Lou Grant, has a previous tie to Arkansas. Director Roger Corman made the 1970 movie Bloody Mama in Arkansas. The film starred Shelley Winters as Ma Barker, the matriarch of a Prohibition-era crime family, and Walden and a 26-year-old actor named Robert De Niro as two of Barker’s sons.

Winthrop Rockefeller, as head of what was then known as the Arkansas Industrial Development Commission and later as governor from 1967-71, had worked to promote the state as a good place to film movies. Rockefeller brought Corman to Arkansas, and Corman, in turn, brought Walden to act in the film. Now, Walden lives on acreage that once was part of the Rockefeller ranch.

Corman, a Detroit native, returned to Arkansas to film another movie that would become a cult classic, the 1972 film Boxcar Bertha. Other movies filmed in Arkansas during the decade would become cult classics. Two-Lane Blacktop in 1971 and Arkansas native Charles B. Pierce’s The Legend of Boggy Creek in 1972 were two of them.

“Bloody Mama was shot in andaround Mountain Home and Little Rock,” Ben Fry writes for the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture. “More than 150 Baxter County residents were hired as extras, including the county judge and the mayor of Mountain Home. The film featured violence and some nudity, which prompted a group of Batesville residents hired for bit parts to walk off the set in Little Rock. . . . Corman returned his film crew to the state two years later to shoot another exploitation film featuring violence and nudity, but with a fresh young director at the helm. Boxcar Bertha was Martin Scorsese’s first Hollywood assignment. The film was another crime film set in the 1930s, this time starting Barbara Hershey as the title character. . . . During the shooting of this movie, Hershey handed Scorsese a copy of The Last Temptation of Christ, a book the director would later turn into one of his most controversial films.”

The stars of Two-Lane Blacktop were singer James Taylor and BeachBoys drummer Dennis Wilson, who played two drifters racing a 1955 Chevrolet across the country. The film featured a ride on the Toad Suck Ferry across the Arkansas River near Conway. The Legend of Boggy Creek used residents of the Fouke area who claimed to have seen a monster in the Miller County woods. The movie grossed more than $22 million after requiring just $160,000 to make. Pierce used that success to fund more movies, including two more shot in Arkansas.

In 1979, the Arkansas Motion Picture Development Office was created. What’s now the Arkansas Economic Development Commission still has a film unit, which has been led since 2007 by Christopher Crane.

The real excitement these days, however, comes from the grass-roots elements that have sprung up in recent years. For example, brothers Brent and Craig Renaud joined forces with Owen Brainard and Jamie Moses to create the Little Rock Film Festival in 2005. More than 100 films are screened each year during the festival. By 2010, MovieMaker magazine was including the festival on its list of the top 25 film festivals worth the entry fee.

In 2011, the Arkansas Motion Picture Institute (AMPI) was created to support the growth of the state’s film, television and digital-media industries. Hollywood producer Courtney Pledger was named the organization’s first executive director last August. Pledger, who will be on the faculty of the Rockefeller Institute’s film forum, also took on the role of interim director of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Institute. AMPI is planning a series of regional screenings of films made in Arkansas for later this year, and the first film screened will be Bloody Mama.

Craig Renaud also will be a faculty member at the Rockefeller Institute event. The Renaud brothers have spent the past decade producing news and documentary programs around the world. Younger Arkansas natives such as the Renaud brothers have joined forces with older hands such as Walden and Arkansas native Harry Thomason to carve a bigger role for the state in the film industry.

When they gather for dinner on the evening of March 21 on Petit Jean Mountain, there undoubtedly will be remembrances of Bloody Mama, Boxcar Bertha, The Legend of Boggy Creek, White Lightning and other movies filmed in Arkansas. But there also will be a vision for the future role of the state, a vision that seems clearer now than ever before.

Freelance columnist Rex Nelson is the president of Arkansas’ Independent Colleges and Universities. He’s also the author of the Southern Fried blog at rexnelsonsouthernfried.com.