At the time, he just thought they all believed it was a good
idea. Much later, he asked them about that night. One replied,
“Well, you have to support a friend’s dream.” She didn’t say it,
but Bobbert imagined she was thinking” …even if he is a bit
daft.”
Nuts or not, Bobbert forged ahead. “I thought I knew what I
needed to do. I didn’t.” He had recently finished a video for a
local Richmond business. It had taken him 31/2 weeks to do the
51-minute production. So how long could a feature film take?
As it turned out, 2 1/2 years. Bobbert began writing the
screenplay along with collaborators Tom Parish and Alice Jones
in February 2003. Slowing him down was the steep learning curve
of adjusting to digital technology. “I had spent 30 years in the
analog world of TV production and, before that, radio. But the
digital world is a whole new ballgame—and very picky,” he said.
“I had to learn a lot of this technology as we shot the film.”
Film-maker Larry Bobbert.
In addition, he was doing it all. “I directed the actors, I shot
the camera, I edited, I handled the audio.” It was a handful for
Bobbert, and what he hoped would be finished in matter of weeks
stretched into years.
The script was a drawing room murder mystery, inspired by the
classic board game “Clue.” But the Hollywood movie version of
“Clue,” which came out in 1985 and starred Lesley Ann Warren,
Tim Curry, and Madeline Kahn, was too tongue in cheek, he said.
He wanted to take a more serious approach.
An ideal location for the spooky mansion where the killing takes
place was right in his own back yard. The White Hall State
Historic Site in Madison Co., the home of Kentucky abolitionist
Cassius Marcellus Clay, offered Bobbert the opportunity to shoot
there. For six weeks, four nights a week, the majestic rooms,
stairway, hallways, and even basement became the setting for the
sinister goings-on. Other locations around Richmond included a
barbershop, bowling alley, restaurant, and library.
Bobbert himself played the role of the murder victim, a dinner
party host who has been blackmailing all the guests. Alice
Jones, who shared scriptwriting duties with Bobbert, also took a
role in the film. She was a mysterious widow who has already
buried four husbands and may have had a hand in their untimely
deaths.
Other local actors from the Richmond area rounded out the cast.
And a few prominent Central Kentucky figures made cameos in the
production, including Richmond Mayor Connie Lawson and Channel
36 reporter Greg Stotelmyer.
Finally this spring, Bobbert had “A Bluegrass Who Dun It” ready
for the screen. He premiered it in March on the EKU campus, and
then in April at the Kentucky Theatre. For those who missed
those events, Bobbert is putting finishing touches on a DVD of
the film, which will be available for purchase in June.
Information on how to get a copy will be on his Web site,
www.drbobbert.com.
Bobbert’s advice to budding filmmakers? “If you want to do it,
just do it. The equipment is so cheap, and it’s so easy to
distribute your film on DVD, that there’s no excuse not to go
ahead and give it a shot,” he said. “It won’t be the greatest
and the best, but it will be the first. Just get your feet wet
and work with other people who have been there before.” Some EKU
students who worked with Bobbert on “Who Dun It” said they
learned more working on the film than in all the classes they
took.
He also suggests starting small. “Do some shorts. You don’t have
to start off with a full-length feature film. Just get something
finished, get it under your belt.”
Bobbert said he is looking at future productions, but he plans
to make sure he has the budget to hire the right people so that
he won’t have to do it all himself. “I would need a quarter- to
a half-million dollar budget to do it again,” he said. But, he
adds that directing the movie was “probably a one-time event if
I want to stay married.”
For this retiree, it may have taken him awhile to get his first
film under his belt, but the wait was worth it. Larry Bobbert
has shown that it’s never too late to learn new things, and it’s
never too late to do the things you’ve always wanted to do.
(The rest of the article is not printed here since it did not
concern the Bluegrass Who Dun It.
You can contact Tim at
timhill@insightbb.com.
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