Drama to ponder NORMAL FOLK
From March 13, 2008:
Article in Bloomington (IL) daily The Pantagraph about Hollywood filmmaker Graham Streeter visiting Bloomington-Normal to scout locations for his upcoming narrative feature NORMAL FOLK, which will star Normal resident Marty Murphy as a woman living with severe autism. (Remember that the direct link to this article will expire soon.)
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Editor’s note: Amazingly, Murphy has high-functioning autism in real life and speaks to audiences about how she handles the condition. It will also be interesting to see how Graham (who has cast disabled non-actors in prior films) straddles that precarious line between sentimentality and melodrama, although I think it’s pretty obvious from the article that he has something in mind other than stunt casting and Lifetime-level theatrics. Good luck to the production when they touch down in the Other Twin Cities later this year!
And on that note … Decatur gets filmmaking visitors this year, Bloomington-Normal gets filmmaking visitors this year, Springfield gets filmmaking (well, television-making) visitors practically every year with a dollop of Reese Witherspoon plopped on top, and Champaign-Urbana gets … the fading memory of when Warner Brothers sent the crew of WITH HONORS here to shoot one token scene 15 years ago. Anyone want to remedy this, already? Please?
~ Jason Pankoke