Special to The Morning News
It’s the story of a unique, decades-long friendship between two young men that features the state of Arkansas as one of the stars.
The movie is “War Eagle, Arkansas,” and the feature, which began shooting Monday in Eureka Springs, is attracting genuine attention. For some of the principal speaking roles, the indie flick has pulled in big names like Golden
Globe,
Emmy and two-time Tony Award winner Brian Dennehy (“Silverado”), Academy and
Emmy Award nominee Mare Winningham (“St. Elmo’s Fire”), Emmy and Grammy
Award winner Mary Kay Place (HBO’s “Big Love”) and Emmy nominee James
McDaniel (“NYPD Blue”).“War Eagle, Arkansas” is the brainchild of North Little Rock resident Vincent Insalaco, the movie’s executive producer. The story, written by Insalaco, is based on the real-life friendship of his own son, Vince, and Vince’s longtime friend, Tim, who is confined to a wheelchair.
“The story is a metaphor of their friendship condensed,” Insalaco said of the young mens’ 22-year friendship. “What we decided to do was take a poignant time in their life and sort of metaphor it into a film because it is unique. I don’t know if I’ve ever quite seen a film like this before.”
To transform his story into a big screen adaptation, Insalaco happened across New York-based screenwriter Graham Gordy, a native of Conway. Gordy took Vince and Tim’s story and transformed it into the tale of two characters named Enoch and Wheels.
“He (Gordy) took it, and he came up with this remarkable story about these two guys — one who has cerebral palsy (Wheels) and the other who has a speech impediment (Enoch) but is an all-star athlete, so he’s a very quiet person,” Insalaco said. “But the kid who’s got cerebral palsy, he is highly intelligent, a really smart-mouthed person. Together, through their friendship, they sort of make a complete person.”
Insalaco said Gordy did an amazing job of capturing the essence of the young men on which the script is based.
“It’s so hard to capture the truth,” Insalaco said. “But after both of the mothers — my wife and Tim’s mother, the real characters — they both told me … they were just shocked at how it really reminded them of their sons.
Young Actors Enjoy Challenges
Luke Grimes, who plays Enoch, said he was immediately impressed with both the script and his character.
“My character’s very able-bodied, and he’s an athlete, but he can’t speak. He’s not good around people in certain situations,” Grimes said. “And Wheels kind of takes that up for him and helps him out with that part of it. Wheels is the one who isn’t able-bodied, and my character can help him with that. I was always impressed by how Enoch can … he can take a lot, but when it’s time, he can give it back, too.”
Dan McCabe, who portrays Wheels, agreed he was attracted to the script by the friendship between the two young men as well as the physical challenges involved in playing a person with cerebral palsy.
“Obviously, the challenge of the part of Wheels is kind of an actor’s dream, playing someone with such a huge disability,” McCabe said. “I love the fact that he’ll take advantage of his disadvantage. He’s a big loud-mouth, class clown kind of character.”
Misti Traya, who has appeared on “Joan of Arcadia” and “Huff,” plays Abby, a girl Enoch has a crush on and who becomes interested in him following his success at a big baseball game.
“I liked Abby because teenage girls, most of the time, are written so close to stereotypes — they’re really nasty, they’re full of angst or they’re so sweet and so painfully shy that they’re basically milquetoast,” Traya said. “I like Abby because she seems to admire in Enoch that he nurtures his friend, that they have this reciprocal relationship.”
The relationship between Enoch and Wheels also is greatly influenced by the character of “Pop,” Enoch’s grandfather played by Brian Dennehy.
“In the movie, they (Enoch and Wheels) neither one have dads, fathers — we kind of removed the fathers,” Insalaco said. “The reason we did that was because the grandfather in real life had such an overwhelming impact on their relationship. So we decided that the grandfather was going to be the dominant male influence in their life.”
Another pivotal character in the story is the state of Arkansas, said line producer Marco Henry, who worked on the South by Southwest jury prize winner “Live Free or Die.”
“Vincent is a Little Rock guy, and he’s a big believer that this state has not been shown to its maximum advantage in previous feature films necessarily,” Henry said. “Always in the background, we’re going to be trying to show the best Arkansas has to offer up here in Northwest Arkansas in terms of the people, the towns, obviously the beautiful Ozarks and the rivers and the lakes and all the stuff that’s around here. What we really want to show at the end of this is, ‘Look Arkansas is beautiful.’”
Strong Script Helps Film Soar
Henry said “War Eagle, Arkansas” will be shot at a hectic pace typical for indie features.
“We are a low-budget, independent movie, so it’s not like a studio is giving us millions of dollars to do this,” Henry said. “So typically, on a movie like this where it’s low budget, you just have to really run and gun on this, so that means shooting 22 days over four weeks. It gets pretty intense.”
Despite the movie’s low budget nature, Henry said the strength of the script is giving the movie some big wings. Based on the quality of the script, Henry said Panavision awarded the production a grant that will allow “War Eagle” to be shot on 35mm film instead of the far lesser quality digital formats for which most indie projects settle.
“I keep saying we’re fortunate, but having said that, what it comes down to is the script is so good,” Henry said. “When people read it, they want to be a part of it, and that’s why Panavision is with us, and why a lot of these actors are doing the movie for us, and why we have such a great crew coming to work on a low budget show and foregoing their usual commercial work or whatever they do to make ends meet because they love the script. That’s really the principal weapon in the armory that we have — we have an amazing script.”
And the real life Enoch and Wheels — Vince and Tim — are up to their own amazing achievements. Insalaco said Vince is married, has a daughter and is working on Mike Beebe’s campaign to become the next governor of Arkansas. Tim graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and will beginning teaching at a junior high school in the fall.
But how do the two young men feel about having a movie based on their friendship?
“They’re very, very excited about it, but at the same time, they’re both, ‘That’s cool,’” Insalaco said. “They’re both pretty laid back guys.”
Casting Call
Most scenes for “War Eagle, Arkansas” will be shot within a 15- to 20-mile radius of Eureka Springs. However, one big scene — a pivotal baseball game — will be shot Aug. 26 at Fayetteville High School, and hundreds of extras will needed for the sequence.
Anyone interested in serving as an extra can get more information and receive updates at www.wareaglethemovie.com.