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Browns lose game they never should have lost
After 30 years at the helm of Akron Children's, Considine still looks to future
Quinn's career day isn't quite enough for Browns to win
Browns find another way to lose
New version of Mozilla Thunderbird landing soon
SCORE offers wide variety of workshops
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Police accuse bank robbery suspect of gobbling up note (with dashcam video)
Victim of beating in Kent last week is declared dead at Akron hospital
Akron man killed in crash on his street
Browns find another way to lose
Can DNA tests free ex-Akron captain?
After 30 years at the helm of Akron Children's, Considine still looks to future
Dad accused of forcing son into field, killing him
Man found dead in North Akron home is identified
Blogs:
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Cat-loving chihuahua suckles seven abandoned kittens
The Heldenfiles:
Sunday Notebook
Patrick McManamon:
Browns sick after sick loss in Detroit
Akron Zips:
No. 1 Akron to play Stanford next
Tribe Matters:
Seven players added to Tribe’s 40-man roster
Cleveland Browns:
Post-game defensive quotes
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Kent State defeats Rochester College, 63-44
Cleveland Cavaliers:
Gameblog: Cavs vs. Philadelphia 76ers
Buckeye Blogging:
OSU – Michigan college football rivals meet in Baghdad
Varsity Letters:
Four area football teams play tonight
All Da King's Men:
The Onion, By Any Other Name…
Blog of Mass Destruction:
Will Health Care Reform Pass?
Akron Law Café:
Health Care Financing Reform: (70) Savings in Medicare Advantage
See Jane Style:
Vintage Chic
Car Chase:
TIME TO GET YOUR COLLECTOR CARS WINTERIZED
Let's Talk Real Estate:
Faye Dunaway to be Evicted?
Ohio Travels with Betty:
Monique asks how to get tickets for the Polar Express.
Sound Check:
Steely Dan Plays "The Royal Scam" at E.J. Thomas Hall
HRLite House:
Personal Rant – You are All Wrong About Jobs, or the Lack of Jobs, Being the Reason People Do Not Live in NEO
Akron Gamer:
Nintendo's Mario endures even as games come and go
Northern Ohioans hold on tight to fame tied to hit movie 15 years ago. It helps in 'six degrees of Kevin Bacon' game, too
By David Giffels
Beacon Journal columnist
POSTED: 11:03 a.m. EDT, Aug 26, 2008
There's a weird advantage for northern Ohioans playing the old ''six degrees of Kevin Bacon'' game.
That's the film trivia exercise where you name a random actor and you have to connect him or her to Bacon in six steps or less.
Take Rob Lucas, for instance. Guy lives around here, no Hollywood connections, no movie star friends. The operations director of the Akron Film Festival made a local independent film called American Stories, in which he played a cameo role. The cast included another local guy named Larry Miles . . . who was in The Shawshank Redemption . . . with Tim Robbins . . . who was in Mystic River with . . . Kevin Bacon.
Three degrees.
You start testing this, and you find it happening over and over. The Shawshank Redemption was filmed 15 years ago at locations in Mansfield and Upper Sandusky and Ashland, making use of the creepily ornate, out-of-commission Ohio State Reformatory and the well preserved mid-century architecture in those towns.
It also made use of lots of gaffers, best boys, crowd scene extras and a few local professional actors.
All of which adds up to a certain kind of legacy unique to places like ours, where brushes with fame are rare and therefore have unusual staying power.
People in these parts will rent The Shawshank Redemption and freeze the movie on their DVD players to relive their 15 seconds (or less) of fame. They scan the backgrounds for familiar buildings. They look at, say, the bank where protagonist Andy Dufresne makes a notable withdrawal and realize — it's the actual bank in downtown Ashland where they make their own withdrawals.
Next thing you know, you're rubbing metaphorical shoulders with Kevin Bacon.
That's why a 15-year Shawshank Redemption Reunion organized for next weekend seems entirely reasonable, and why it's scheduled over three days at seven locations in three different cities, and why Gov. Ted Strickland has signed an official proclamation recognizing the event:''FRANCES AND I EXTEND OUR BEST WISHES FOR AN ENJOYABLE CELEBRATION!''
It's why Rohn Thomas, a veteran Kent actor, can always count on a piqued response when he mentions The Shawshank Redemption. It doesn't matter that he has appeared in an impressive number and caliber of Hollywood productions, nor that his Shawshank role was a blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment, nor that he has no degrees of Kevin Bacon separation — they were in a film together.
''Shawshank Redemption,'' he says. ''When I mention that movie, that's the one they get excited about.''
Thomas played the editor of the fictional paper The Bugle, appearing only for a moment in a montage scene late in the film, as Robbins' character completes his elaborate escape plan. He was originally cast in a different, larger role as a parole board member, but was committed to another film shooting at the same time in Pittsburgh. The newspaper office scene was filmed on the last day of shooting in Ohio, so he squeaked in.
These slim degrees of separation are not limited to human participants.
You can walk into Stagecoach Antiques in Akron and pick up, say, a hairbrush, and learn that this hairbrush used to share shelf space with the vintage shoeshine brush purchased by the Shawshank crew for use in the key scene when Robbins buffs his shoes in preparation for his escape.
And Tim Robbins was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon, and there you have it — a brush's brush with fame.
Stagecoach owner Leo Walter once described the production company as ''wonderful customers'' for their purchase of tin cups, pocketknives, toiletries, tools, books and even the baseball glove Morgan Freeman uses in a game of prison-yard catch.
Lots of movies have been made in Northeast Ohio. Kevin Bacon even made one, for gosh sakes — Telling Lies in America, shot in Cleveland in 1996.
So why does Shawshank seem to have such particular resonance?
James Renner, who worked as a film and TV director before becoming an author and staff writer for Scene magazine, has a theory.
''It's become like one of those historical events — in reality, only 20 people probably were there, but 100 say they were in Shawshank,'' he said.
Renner, who plans to attend some of the reunion events, never brushed up against Kevin Bacon, but he has his own unique connection to The Shawshank Redemption. The 30-year-old Akron resident directed one of Stephen King's so-called ''dollar babies'' — a series of films made when King granted one-year movie rights to his stories for one dollar.
The first dollar baby was made by Frank Darabont, who also directed Shawshank, which itself was adapted from a King short story. Renner made the 10th dollar baby, All That You Love Will Be Carried Away. And he later organized a festival of the films in King's hometown of Bangor, Maine.
So he has a certain insight into the way even a mainstream film like The Shawshank Redemption also has a corollary cult following.
Some of it's the King effect — an author whose celebrity is magnetic; some is based on the fact that the movie made a slow, grass-roots build toward popularity; and some of it's that unique connection to Ohio Everyman-ness.
Renner recalls working on a commercial one time, and chatting with an electrician on the set:
''He said, 'If you watch the movie' — and he even knew the exact frame number — he said, 'That's totally my right hand hanging out that door.' And he was so proud.''
David Giffels is a Beacon Journal columnist. He can be reached at 330-996-3572 or at dgiffels@thebeaconjournal.com.
There's a weird advantage for northern Ohioans playing the old ''six degrees of Kevin Bacon'' game.
That's the film trivia exercise where you name a random actor and you have to connect him or her to Bacon in six steps or less.
Take Rob Lucas, for instance. Guy lives around here, no Hollywood connections, no movie star friends. The operations director of the Akron Film Festival made a local independent film called American Stories, in which he played a cameo role. The cast included another local guy named Larry Miles . . . who was in The Shawshank Redemption . . . with Tim Robbins . . . who was in Mystic River with . . . Kevin Bacon.
Three degrees.
You start testing this, and you find it happening over and over. The Shawshank Redemption was filmed 15 years ago at locations in Mansfield and Upper Sandusky and Ashland, making use of the creepily ornate, out-of-commission Ohio State Reformatory and the well preserved mid-century architecture in those towns.
It also made use of lots of gaffers, best boys, crowd scene extras and a few local professional actors.
All of which adds up to a certain kind of legacy unique to places like ours, where brushes with fame are rare and therefore have unusual staying power.
People in these parts will rent The Shawshank Redemption and freeze the movie on their DVD players to relive their 15 seconds (or less) of fame. They scan the backgrounds for familiar buildings. They look at, say, the bank where protagonist Andy Dufresne makes a notable withdrawal and realize — it's the actual bank in downtown Ashland where they make their own withdrawals.
Next thing you know, you're rubbing metaphorical shoulders with Kevin Bacon.
That's why a 15-year Shawshank Redemption Reunion organized for next weekend seems entirely reasonable, and why it's scheduled over three days at seven locations in three different cities, and why Gov. Ted Strickland has signed an official proclamation recognizing the event:''FRANCES AND I EXTEND OUR BEST WISHES FOR AN ENJOYABLE CELEBRATION!''
It's why Rohn Thomas, a veteran Kent actor, can always count on a piqued response when he mentions The Shawshank Redemption. It doesn't matter that he has appeared in an impressive number and caliber of Hollywood productions, nor that his Shawshank role was a blink-or-you'll-miss-it moment, nor that he has no degrees of Kevin Bacon separation — they were in a film together.
''Shawshank Redemption,'' he says. ''When I mention that movie, that's the one they get excited about.''
Thomas played the editor of the fictional paper The Bugle, appearing only for a moment in a montage scene late in the film, as Robbins' character completes his elaborate escape plan. He was originally cast in a different, larger role as a parole board member, but was committed to another film shooting at the same time in Pittsburgh. The newspaper office scene was filmed on the last day of shooting in Ohio, so he squeaked in.
These slim degrees of separation are not limited to human participants.
You can walk into Stagecoach Antiques in Akron and pick up, say, a hairbrush, and learn that this hairbrush used to share shelf space with the vintage shoeshine brush purchased by the Shawshank crew for use in the key scene when Robbins buffs his shoes in preparation for his escape.
And Tim Robbins was in Mystic River with Kevin Bacon, and there you have it — a brush's brush with fame.
Stagecoach owner Leo Walter once described the production company as ''wonderful customers'' for their purchase of tin cups, pocketknives, toiletries, tools, books and even the baseball glove Morgan Freeman uses in a game of prison-yard catch.
Lots of movies have been made in Northeast Ohio. Kevin Bacon even made one, for gosh sakes — Telling Lies in America, shot in Cleveland in 1996.
So why does Shawshank seem to have such particular resonance?
James Renner, who worked as a film and TV director before becoming an author and staff writer for Scene magazine, has a theory.
''It's become like one of those historical events — in reality, only 20 people probably were there, but 100 say they were in Shawshank,'' he said.
Renner, who plans to attend some of the reunion events, never brushed up against Kevin Bacon, but he has his own unique connection to The Shawshank Redemption. The 30-year-old Akron resident directed one of Stephen King's so-called ''dollar babies'' — a series of films made when King granted one-year movie rights to his stories for one dollar.
The first dollar baby was made by Frank Darabont, who also directed Shawshank, which itself was adapted from a King short story. Renner made the 10th dollar baby, All That You Love Will Be Carried Away. And he later organized a festival of the films in King's hometown of Bangor, Maine.
So he has a certain insight into the way even a mainstream film like The Shawshank Redemption also has a corollary cult following.
Some of it's the King effect — an author whose celebrity is magnetic; some is based on the fact that the movie made a slow, grass-roots build toward popularity; and some of it's that unique connection to Ohio Everyman-ness.
Renner recalls working on a commercial one time, and chatting with an electrician on the set:
''He said, 'If you watch the movie' — and he even knew the exact frame number — he said, 'That's totally my right hand hanging out that door.' And he was so proud.''
David Giffels is a Beacon Journal columnist. He can be reached at 330-996-3572 or at dgiffels@thebeaconjournal.com.
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