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40 YEARS

Published by Oz Publishing, Inc.

Cover and book design by Rositsa Germanova

ISBN: 978-0-9749791-2-0

Copyright 2013

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from

the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

The Library of Congress Control Number: 2013936606

by Nichole Bazemore

Oz Publishing, Inc.Atlanta

The Industry Yearbook 1973-2013

Foreword Hal Needham ................................................................... 1

Introduction ................................................................................ 3

The 1970s The Beginning .................................................................. 4

1973 - 1982 Upperclassmen .................................................. 26

The 1980s “It was like the wild, wild West.” .................................. 30

1983 - 1992 Juniors .................................................................. 44

The 1990s Show Me the Money: Tax Incentives Take Center Stage ............................................................................... 48

1993 - 2002 Sophomores ........................................................ 64

The 2000s The Chickens Come Home to Roost ............................ 68

2003 - 2013 Freshmen ............................................................. 85

Drama Class: Talent Department ......................................... 90

In Memoriam ............................................................................ 95

Recess ..................................................................................... 105

The Principals: Film Commissioners .................................. 129

Film Class: Filmology ............................................................ 136

Clubs and Associations ........................................................ 145

Extra-Curricular Activities: Film Festivals ........................... 151

Milestones: Companies ........................................................ 157

Shout-Outs! ............................................................................. 170

Community Support .............................................................. 173

Administrative Support ......................................................... 189

End Notes .......................................................................... 190

Selected Bibliography ..................................................... 192

Masthead ........................................................................... 194

Acknowledgements .......................................................... 195

Photo Credits ..................................................................... 196

About the Author ............................................................... 198

Index ....................................................................................... 199

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Here’s the shot: five miles of interstate

highway shut down to accommodate a

20-truck convoy aiding and abetting the

Bandit to outrun Smokey.

When we began scouting locations

for Smokey and the Bandit, I visited a state

(that shall remain nameless) and was told

there was no way they could shut down

the interstate. I returned to the airport

where I immediately called Georgia Film

Commissioner, Ed Spivia.

I’d met Spivia when I was 2nd Unit

Director on The Longest Yard and Stunt

Coordinator on Gator. Smokey was going be

my directorial debut. Over the phone I told

him the shots I needed. He said, “No problem.

Come on down to Georgia.” Of course Spivia

(I always call him Spivia, never Ed) was at the

airport when we arrived.

With all the help and cooperation

Georgia supplied, Smokey was shot on

schedule and on budget. So when we were

prepping to shoot Smokey 2, guess where we

went? Yep. Georgia.

For Smokey 2, we scouted locations

over two days. I got an invitation from Governor

Busbee to have breakfast at the governor’s

mansion. I had eight crew members with me

and the governor invited us all.

He asked if Spivia was taking good

care of us. I said, “Great!” But the one shot

I still needed was a town where I could land

a plane in the middle of Main Street and

take off again. Busbee said, “Ed, what about

Covington? They close all the stores every

Wednesday afternoon.” Spivia made it happen.

When we shot the scene, the stores

may have been closed but people from miles

around showed up to watch. It was the biggest

turnout Covington ever had.

The kindness and support we received

from Georgia greatly contributed to the

success of the movies I made there. When

you’re ready to shoot your next movie or TV

show, go to Georgia.

Hal Needham

2013

Foreword

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Introduction

Y’all Make Movies in Georgia?!

In 1996, when I moved here, that was a

valid question, especially from someone who

was new to the state. That’s because, after

a heyday in the 1970s, when an estimated

twenty films and TV shows – including

Deliverance, The Dukes of Hazzard, Smokey

and the Bandit, Sharky’s Machine, and

more – were shot in the state, movie and TV

production had come to a screeching halt.

Productions “ran away,” lured to other states,

and even Canada, by financial incentives

like tax breaks. For a while, especially in the

decade between the mid-1990s and the mid-

2000s, it seemed as if Georgia was a bastard

stepchild of the film and TV industry.

Fast-forward to 2013, and anyone

who’s surprised that we make movies in

Georgia will get the side-eye. Heck yes,

we make movies in Georgia; lots of them,

in fact. Since 1973, when then-Governor

Jimmy Carter formed the state’s first film

commission, we’ve made over 700 feature

films, TV movies, TV series, single episodes,

pilots, and commercials. We completed 333

productions in 2012 alone. Georgia is one of

the top five movie-making states in the nation,

behind New York and California, and in fiscal

year 2012, the industry’s impact on the state’s

revenue was $3.4 billion.

But anyone who’s ever achieved

anything knows “overnight success”

never really happens overnight. Georgia’s

“overnight success” was actually forty

years in the making. Dozens of dedicated

men and women – talent agents, casting

agents, gaffers, grips, production assistants,

assistant directors, locations scouts, caterers

and talent, just to name a few – were in the

trenches from the beginning, building the

crew base and infrastructure and laying the

groundwork for the financial incentives that

created the overflow we see today. They’re

the pioneers, the “old timers,” the people who

made it happen. They’re the ones who set the

stage, literally and figuratively, for Georgia to

earn the nickname “Hollywood of the South.”

Over the past year, I, along with my

colleagues at Oz Publishing, Inc., and Magick

Lantern Studios, had the chance to sit down

and talk to some of these folks about their

journey – to learn about the way things were

“way back when.” Through face-to-face

interviews and extensive research, I’ve woven

together the largely untold forty-year history of

the film and TV industry in Georgia.

Yes, we make movies in Georgia, and

didn’t you know? We always have. It is my

privilege and honor to share with you just how

we got from there to here.

Nichole Bazemore

Atlanta, 2013

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Ed Spivia

The 1970sThe Beginning

(Or, when a raging river, an eerie-looking banjo player, and four

little words put Georgia on Hollywood’s mind.)

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Ed Spivia (pronounced SPY-vee) was a handsome, charismatic young man with long hair that swooped just to the

corner of his eye. He had dimples and a soft, Southern drawl that was as smooth and fluid as blackstrap molasses. The North Carolina native also had a healthy sense of curiosity and a keen sense for news, a carryover from his days as a reporter at WGST Radio in Atlanta.

But Spivia’s radio days were long behind him. He had traded in his tape recorder and microphone for a job with the Georgia Department of Industry and Trade, an entity whose mission was to bring new business and tourism into the state. As the department’s director of public relations, Spivia was responsible for churning out an in-house publication about things happening around Georgia. The magazine was called Georgia Progress, and one hot summer day in 1971, Spivia walked out of his comfortable, air-conditioned office in Atlanta, got into his car, and headed north on Georgia Interstate 85 to a little town that’s nestled in a nook near the Georgia–South Carolina border. There, he would stumble upon the biggest story of his life.

**Rabun County, Georgia, is located

at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Its unspoiled landscape is marked by lush, thick forests, crystal-clear streams, and waterfalls. It was the picture-perfect backdrop for a Hollywood movie – which is exactly why a production crew from Warner Brothers Pictures had gathered there that summer. They were making a film called Deliverance, which was based on the novel by native

Atlantan James Dickey. It told the story of four

OVERLEAF: Ed Spivia, a man with big plans for Georgia.TOP: Ed Spivia at WGST Radio.BOTTOM: Martins Creek Falls, Rabun County.

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Atlanta businessmen who take a rafting trip

in the mountains – a trip that goes horribly

wrong. The movie starred Jon Voight; Ned

Beatty; Ronny Cox; and a young, handsome,

emerging actor named Burt Reynolds.

During the drive to the North Georgia

Mountains, Spivia reasoned that a film being

made in the state was as big a story as any.

But it wasn’t until he arrived in the small

town of Clayton that he realized just how big

a story it was. When Spivia arrived on the

banks of the Chattooga River, where much

of the movie was shot, the light bulb went on.

What he saw – dozens of out-of-town crew

members needing food, lodging, props, and

costumes, and dozens of local folks being

cast in the film as extras – got him to thinking.

“I noticed that it required a lot of input from

the local community,” Spivia says. “Movie

companies needed hotel rooms at a discount

rate because they’d be there for an extended

period of time, and they needed to rent cars

and buy lumber … I thought this should be

Deliverance was the first film to put Georgia on the map, but it was not the first film to be made here. In fact, movie making in the state dates back to the early 1900s. One of the earliest movies, The Plunderer, was filmed in Dahlonega in 1915..1

Neither was Deliverance the first film to be shot in Georgia in the 1970s. Together for Days, starring Clifton Davis, Lois Chiles, and a young Samuel L. Jackson (then a student at Morehouse College) in his acting debut, was shot in Atlanta in 1971.2

BELOW, L-R: Ned Beatty, John Voight, Ronny Cox and Burt Reynolds, Deliverance (1972).

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something that we should pursue to help

everybody

When he got back to Atlanta, Spivia

shared his ideas with Lieutenant General

Louis W. Truman, a former commanding

general in the U.S. Army, cousin to former

President Harry S. Truman, commissioner

of the Georgia Department of Industry

and Trade, and Governor Jimmy Carter’s

right-hand man. Truman agreed that film

production could be a viable, profitable

industry in the state, and the two men

put together a proposal and sent it to the

governor. In 1973, one year after Deliverance

was released, Carter signed an executive

order establishing the first Georgia film office.

He asked Spivia to head it. Spivia’s task:

to lure productions from New York and Los

Angeles to the Peach State.

Georgia wasn’t the first state in

the nation to have a film commission, but

Georgia’s commission was perhaps the

most assertive. While agencies in other

states mostly directed and assisted film

crews once they arrived to start production,

Spivia launched an active recruitment effort,

advertising in “The Hollywood Reporter” and

“Variety” magazines and actually setting up

“economic development tours” to personally

meet representatives from all the major film

companies in LA and Chicago.

To help with their promotional efforts,

Carter and Spivia called in Beverly Anderson,

founder of Atlanta’s premier talent agency,

Atlanta Models & Talent. Since founding

AM&T in 1962, Anderson had enjoyed great

success in booking talent with agencies in

Deliverance was nominated for five Golden Globes and three Academy Awards, including best picture and best director. It also brought in $46 million at the box office. But many people were put off by the film, arguing that it portrayed the people of North Georgia as backward, inbred hillbillies. One of the film’s most vocal opponents was future Georgia Governor Zell Miller, who would write in his autobiography that he placed Deliverance on his list of most-hated books.4

Rabun County resident Billy Redden (below), who played the banjo player in Deliverance, was a high school student sitting in class the day California film producers cast him for the film. For the movie, Redden’s makeup was applied in such a way as to make him appear to be a mentally challenged albino.

After Deliverance, tourism in Rabun County quickly became the area’s biggest moneymaking industry. By 2012, forty years after the film’s release, tourism would bring in an estimated $42 million in revenue for the county.

SIDEBAR: Billy Redden, a/k/a “Banjo Boy.”

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New York and Chicago. Spivia hoped she

could bring some of that success to the newly

formed film office. Anderson signed on as a

consultant and became the state’s first film

representative. Then she got to work, selling

the benefits of all things Georgia to producers

and key decision makers, just as she’d done

when building AM&T. “The sales concept was

simple,” Anderson says. “I’d say, ‘When winter

sets in, you need to go on location down

South. Why go to Florida, where there is a

palm tree on every corner? Take a look at the

diversity of Georgia, the talent pool, and the

emerging technical businesses here.’”

Spivia and his team combined their

cold calling and face-to-face meetings with

a massive advertising campaign to lure

film producers to Georgia. Some of those

Georgia was the third state to create a film commission. Colorado was the first, in 1969, followed by Mississippi in 1973, and then Georgia, later the same year.

BELOW, L-R: Lieutenant General Louis W. Truman, Governor Jimmy Carter, Beverly Anderson and Ed Spivia.

Contrary to popular belief, Gone with the Wind was not filmed in Georgia, but in Culver City, California, primarily at Culver Studios (at that time it was called Selznick International Studios). No one knows for sure where author Margaret Mitchell got her inspiration for Tara Plantation, but some historians believe it may have been Stately Oaks Plantation, which was originally located on Tara Boulevard in Jonesboro, Georgia.3

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ads featured Governor Carter sitting in a

director’s chair. Before long, the group’s

efforts paid off. Movie producers began

heading to Georgia to see what all the talk

was about. Once crews arrived, Spivia and

his five-person staff would actually go out to

help scout locations. Sometimes producers

came to the state with the singular goal of

finding the perfect location for their next

film; other times, they were simply here on

other business – in which case Spivia and his

team had to be a bit more creative in putting

Georgia on the producers’ minds.

Case in point: John Wayne. In 1973,

the veteran actor came to Georgia for a

Cattleman’s Association meeting. When

Spivia found out about it, he arranged a

meeting to convince Wayne to make a movie

in the state. Spivia says, “An aide came

in with a bottle of bourbon and poured a

glass. John Wayne drank it down and said,

‘Let’s get down to business.’ So, I played a

tape in the VCR.” The video showcased the

diversity of the Georgia landscape – coastline,

mountains, and forests. Even though Wayne

had previously filmed a movie in the state

– The Green Berets in 1968 – he didn’t

seem convinced that the varied topography

showcased on the TV screen was, in fact, in

the state of Georgia.

“About thirty seconds in, he started

banging his hand on the table,” Spivia says.

“He said, ‘You can’t tell me this is Georgia.

Georgia is just hot and flat and dry.’”

“And I said, ‘If you’ll give me just

a few minutes to finish my presentation, I

do believe I’ll change your mind.’” Wayne

In 1974, North Carolina native Annette Stillwell moved to Atlanta and, one year later, founded what would become a very successful cast and crew payroll company. By 1980, Stilwell would become an Emmy award-winning producer and one of the premier casting directors in the Southeast.

Harold Morris, an inmate at Reidsville Prison, also worked as an extra in The Longest Yard. Originally sentenced to two life terms, Morris was later pardoned. When he was released, he wrote a screenplay about his life. Filmed as Unshackled, it was directed by Bart Patton and released in 2000.

SIDEBAR, TOP: Annette Stilwell, producer, Jayan Films.SIDEBAR, BOTTOM, L-R: Director Bart Patton and director of photography Paul Varrieur on the set of Unshackled (2000).

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watched the video and did change his mind.

Over the next few years, Wayne would return

to Georgia many times to scout locations for

future films. Other film companies followed

suit, and before long, the film office had so

many prospects, it was hard to keep up. Some

producers and actors kept coming back. One

of them was Burt Reynolds.

In 1974, Reynolds, who had starred

in Deliverance just two years previously,

returned to Georgia to film

The Longest Yard. The

movie was about a football

player–turned–convict

who organizes a team of

inmates to play against

a team of prison guards.

It was scheduled to film

at a prison in McAllister,

Oklahoma, but three days

before the shoot, prisoners

burned it to the ground.

Reynolds called Spivia for

help finding an alternate

location. Spivia recalls,

“He said, ‘Can you get us

a prison that looks like

this, real quick? If you can,

you’ve got the film.’”

The film commissioner

came through and

arranged for production

to begin at the Georgia

State Prison in Reidsville

shortly after. The Longest

Yard would go on to net more than $43

million in domestic gross sales.5 It would

SIDEBAR, TOP: The early days: Tatum O’Neal on the set of Little Darlings with a Lightnin’ Production Rentals’ truck (1980).SIDEBAR, BOTTOM: Lightnin’ Production Rentals in 2013.

In 1975, The Lewis Family founded Lightnin’ Production Rentals, Inc., in Atlanta. The company began renting production trucks to the motion picture industry in 1979 – everything from star trailers and honey wagons to camera trucks. Lightnin’s first feature film was 1980’s Little Darlings, starring Kristy McNichol and Tatum O’Neal.