25 Hills
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Corbin Bernsen
stagnenttraveler — 16 years ago(April 04, 2010 05:06 PM)
What is up with this movie? Filming has started yet there is zero information about it. Cast? What is it about?
I know some stuff because a friend is in it, but it is not my place to say. Somebody that has that place should start saying. We want to know. -
jepknight — 15 years ago(May 03, 2010 06:08 AM)
USA Today Link:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/movies/news/2010-04-07-Soapbox07_ST_N.htm
ALSO AS POSTED IN THE AKRON BEACON JOURNAL: 05:08 p.m. EDT, Apr 24, 2010
If you're wondering whether Corbin Bernsen has enjoyed shooting a movie in the Akron area, wonder no more. He is already thinking about shooting another movie here.
Friday night, Bernsen finished about two weeks of directing and acting in 25 Hill, the All-American Soap Box Derby-inspired movie that Bernsen also wrote.
The former L.A. Law television star hopes the inspirational story of a boy who gets involved with the derby will improve the fortunes of the struggling organization.
''It's been really great,'' he said of the shoot during an interview at derby headquarters Saturday afternoon. ''The film looks really great. We've had incredible cooperation from the community, which has made it all work. . . .It's just been extraordinary.''
With a big grin, he showed a trailer compiled from the scenes shot here. It looks very, very good, especially when you consider what it is costing.
25 Hill right now has about a $550,000 budget, Bernsen said, although he hopes to raise a couple of hundred thousand more. That's a fraction of what big-budget Hollywood movies use. Avatar, for instance, reportedly cost around $280 million.
Additional scenes are to be shot in June in Taft, Calif., mainly exterior footage to match with interiors shot in Northeast Ohio. There will also be scenes, shot by a separate crew, on the road between California and Akron as the main character and his car make their way to the derby. And around all this, Bernsen will be fitting in his regular acting work; Psych, the USA Network series in which he co-stars, resumes production this week.
Shooting here resumes in late July, during and after the All-American events.
Around mid-May, Bernsen and his team will put out the call for more extras for the local scenes, which will be used to portray the big race climaxing the movie.
Some 2,000 people signed up to be extras in early April, but Bernsen wants more for the race scenes and wants some of them to be special.
''I need two things,'' he said. ''To get crowds, and we also need race families. . . .At least a hundred race families with all their equipment: pop-up tents, folding chairs, their cars. . .their trailers, all that stuff.''
As for the crowd, he said: ''I hope 5,000 people will show up for our derby day. . . .This is where I need everybody to come out.''
He has never directed a crowd like that, he said. But ''my biggest challenge is to make the race footage look good. . . .I want to make sure the end [of the race] looks big and crowded, and I get all the footage I need. I've got to do some studying of racing films now to really see how you build tension and all that. . . .We could put one [camera] down at the bottom of the track and have the cars come first, second and third, but that's boring. . . .
''I have to keep saying it, but the primary goal is to bring attention to the derby. If I'm going to dust off the derby, I want it to look big. My biggest fear is that we'll go on the real derby day and. . .the stands are not filled. Then I have to in the film make it look like the stands are filled.''
All this work should lead to a premiere of the movie around the time of the All-American in 2011. He hopes that it will find an audience, especially in theaters.
''I want people to see this on the big screen because it's going to look beautiful,'' he said.
But he is also thinking about how to package it for DVD.
''You know what I really want?'' Bernsen added. ''I want people to go and tb68ell their kids to start racing.''
He also wants them to have something to race in. In the movie, for example, Geico will appear as a company that helps save the derby.
''My goal there is, they like the experience so much that they transfer over to the real derby,'' Bernsen said.
And that next movie in Akron? In the fall of 2011, Bernsen would like to start making a comedy called Three-Day Test that he wrote some time ago. It involves a man trying to get his dysfunctional family back on track by locking everyone up in his house three days before Christmas without water or power.
''It's sort of like Home Alone,'' he said. ''I've seen the houses [for it] already. I know exactly where I want to shoot it.''
Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com and on Facebook and on Twitter. He also does a weekly video chat for Ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.
If you're wondering whether Corbin Bernsen has enjoyed shooting a movie in the Akron area, wonder no more. He is already thinking about shooting another movie here.
Friday night, Bernsen finished about two weeks of directing and acting in 25 Hill, the All-American Soap Box Derby-inspired movie that Bernsen also wrote.
The former L.A. Law television star hopes the inspirational stor