If you look at greater Alton through a camera lens, you'll see how cinematic it is. From the garish riverfront casino and quaint hillside shops to the gritty mills and fertile farmland, the Riverbend area is a director's dream.

In the past few weeks, two feature films have been shot in the Alton area, both by homegrown filmmakers with six-figure budgets at their disposal. "Steel City" is a working-class family saga by Brian Jun, a 2001 graduate of Webster University who lives in Los Angeles. It stars veteran actor John Heard ("Home Alone"), Edwardsville native Laurie Metcalfe ("Roseanne") and up-and-comer Tom Guiry ("Mystic River").

 

"Pieces of a Dream" is an urban drama directed by Alton High graduate Sherman "Skee" Skinner. It stars Raz-B of the pop-dance band B2K.

This influx of production is purely coincidental, and there's no guarantee that either film will screen in local theaters instead of going straight to video (or oblivion). But as described herein, they've employed local talents on both sides of the camera, and if the films are as eye-catching as the community that hosted them, we may be witnessing the birth of a mid-coast movie industry.

Brian Jun frames hometown in "Steel City"

The slogan on the "Welcome to Jerseyville" sign says "Close to the crowd . . . but not in it." Chad Meyer figured he was away from the crowd when he moved to a plot of land just south of town in early October. A couple of nights later, he came home to find two strangers waiting in his driveway. When they said they wanted to use his property for a movie shoot, he didn't believe them. "I have some friends who are professional jokers," he says.

Two months later, Meyer is shooting snapshots of a small crowd that's surrounding an old mobile home on his property. The building is one of the sets for "Steel City," the feature-film debut of writer and director Brian Jun.

Jun, 25, is an Alton native who has been living in Los Angeles since graduating from Webster University in 2001. Jun is also a graduate of the Fox Searchlab, an incubator program for young filmmakers, which helped finance a short film that he shot in the area in 2002. That film, "Researching Raymond Burke," starred veteran actor John Heard. Heard and Jun remained friends, and when the director was ready to tackle a feature, Heard put him in touch with a Hollywood company called Your Half Pictures, which agreed to finance the project.

Now the actor and director are reunited in Southern Illinois for "Steel City," in which Heard plays the ne'er-do-well father of a working-class clan in a river town. Playing his grown sons are two up-and-coming actors - Tom Guiry, who was in "Mystic River" and "Black Hawk Down," and Clayne Crawford, who was in "A Walk to Remember" and the upcoming John Travolta film "A Love Song for Bobby Long." Also in the cast are America Ferrera, the star of the sleeper hit "Real Women Have Curves," and Laurie Metcalfe, the talented Edwardsville native who is best known as the sister on the TV series "Roseanne."

Jun says that when he wrote the script, he hoped to shoot it in Alton, under the gray skies of late autumn. He says he hasn't needed special permits to film in the area (including a scene at the Alton courthouse and another at the White Spot diner in Jerseyville), but he has lost some of his potential crew members to a Sci-Fi Channel production on the Missouri side of the river.

 

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Belleville Steel City Article  1/31/05
Illinois Style: Alton Stands in for "Steel City" in new movie

JOHN KRUPA

Associated Press

GODFREY, Ill. - A movie production crew led by an Alton native began shooting footage in the River Bend on Dec. 1 for the film "Steel City," the area's second recent movie shoot.

The new film is written and directed by 24-year-old Brian Jun, who, along with his crew of about 35 people, worked in the Alton area through Dec. 20.

One Way Productions shot the feature film "Pieces of a Dream," starring hip-hop musician Raz B, in Alton during November.

Tom Guiry, 24, plays lead character P.J. Lee. Lee lives in a fictional steel town and is wrestling with the question of whether to follow in his father's footsteps and get a job at the local mill or follow his own dream of becoming a police officer. Guiry previously appeared in "Black Hawk Down" and "Mystic River," where he played the boyfriend of the murdered daughter of Sean Penn's character.

Although Jun has a short film to his credit which he shot in Alton in 2002, "Steel City" is his first full-length feature. And Guiry admits he was worried about working with a director just a few years out of Webster University in Webster Groves, Mo.

"But after that first day, I saw everything was going to go smooth," Guiry said, noting that Jun takes charge on the set and offers the guidance and direction that actors thrive on.

Besides Guiry, the film features some other recognizable talent, including veteran actor John Heard of "Home Alone" fame and Laurie Metcalf, who won three Emmys for her work as Roseanne's sister on the hit TV sitcom "Roseanne." Raymond J. Barry, who appeared in "Born on the Fourth of July," "Dead Man Walking" and "Training Day," is also in the movie.

"I'm working with some really good actors here, so I don't want to mess up," Guiry said in between shooting scenes at an abandoned farmhouse.

The house is owned by Jun's father, P.J. Jun, who took a day off of work to watch his son in his element. The crew's use of the family-owned house illustrates how the low-budget shoot has come to depend on assistance from the community to turn Brian Jun's dream into a reality. Working on a bare-bones budget of $200,000, the film has counted on many property owners who agreed to let Jun shoot on their property at no cost.

P.J. Jun said the crew has been overwhelmed by how cooperative and receptive the entire community has been to the project, noting that a film shoot is still a bit of a novelty to local residents.

"This is a big thing to people around here," he said.

Hair designer Theresa Miller joined up through networking with a friend. Miller said she works mostly with television and print, and that working on any movie set, even a low-budget one such as "Steel City," requires much longer hours.

"It's like TV times 1,000," she said, adding that after factoring in her commute from St. Louis, she was working 16-hour days.

After shooting wrapped up, Jun planned to spend the next few months editing the movie into its final form.

The movie should be finished by next fall, ready to hit the 2006 film festival circuit. If it attracts enough interest, a distributor could pick it up for release on DVD.

Credits: Thanks Amanda for finding this lovely article!  It can be found at http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/10568812.htm 

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