SENECA, S.C. – Since he was 13 and growing up in Anderson and Piedmont, Jason Shirley has wanted to make movies.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” the young writer-director said this week.
After Wren High School came a stint at Greenville Technical College and then film school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem.
All the while in film school, and later during some independent-film projects, he was working on a script, a Southern-themed romantic comedy called “Elbow Grease” set in the fictional town of Guppie, S.C., and revolving around a family named Barnes.
When writing the character of the grandfather, he was imagining the actor he’d love for the role. But what chance was there that Burt Reynolds would want the part?
“You have to call it luck,” Shirley said. “We sent the script to his agent and … (Reynolds) liked it.”
Matt Zboyovski, one of the film’s co-producers (“I just help keep things moving along.”) and an Asheville, N.C., native, acknowledges that Reynolds’ own history with and ties to the area from the 1971 filming of the classic film “Deliverance” on the Chattooga River, which some film critics consider his star-making role, might have been a factor
Article source: http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2013/sep/29/south-carolina-locations-gear-filming-elbow-grease/ If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com
