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DVD Done by Former Student on Blockbuster Shelves
(Posted: March 13, 2006) (Printable Version)
About six years ago Jeff Hill left his college classes and a secure job as a respiratory therapist at a Fort Smith hospital and headed for California with movie-making in mind. His DVD — “The Carpet Creature” — has just hit 11 Blockbuster Video stores in Arkansas and Missouri.
Hill had been attending classes since 1994 at the University of Arkansas - Fort Smith, the former Westark College, and had even bought a Super 8 camera and shot a movie here.
“I didn’t know how to make movies at the time,” Hill said, “but I just got the Super 8 and started practicing a lot. And, I started getting good enough that things were looking half- way decent. It was only a 30-minute movie. I liked it, but it never sold. I actually tried to edit it a couple of times, but since I was new to the business, unfortunately the movie shows that.”
While at UA Fort Smith, Hill helped with shows, including lighting for productions. He even worked as a photographer on the school newspaper for a couple of semesters. After he and a friend left Fort Smith for California, they joined up with a couple of others from Fort Smith. He worked odd jobs until his respiratory paperwork came through. Hill then went to work as a respiratory therapist and is now at St. Francis Hospital in Lynwood, Calif.
“Respiratory is a pretty good job,” he said. “It’s OK money.” And it was a way to live while he worked on his dream. Completion of “The Carpet Creature” was a three-year project, done in parts.
“One of the reasons it took three years was that I had to space it out,” he said. “I had to pay for everything in chunks. I’d work, save a few thousand, film part of the movie, work and save some more.”
He even shot the movie in two halves, again using money as he had it.
“The movie cost $60,000,” he said. “I’d usually save four or five thousand and carry that as far as I could. I did most of the filming myself, so that saved money.”
That the DVD ended up in Blockbuster came from a combination of things, including the fact that he and Lissa Findley, loss prevention officer for Blockbuster, knew each other when Hill was a student at the college.
Findley said the Blockbusters that have the DVD for rental are part of a franchise, making it easier to place local or regional items on their shelves because of Blockbuster’s community friendly-attitude.
“I remember Jeff from back when I lived and worked in Fort Smith,” said Findley, who is now based out of Missouri but is back in Fort Smith regularly. “I remember him announcing he was going off to Hollywood to make a movie. I heard from him once in a while, and then I got a call from someone who knew him, saying he was about to finish his movie and wanted to talk to me. We talked, and I agreed to put his DVD in Blockbuster.”
Findley sees a number of films through film festivals and has even seen first movies done by now-famous stars.
“Who knows?” she said. “He might do well, and we don’t know where this first DVD will lead.”
Another thing Findley remembers about Hill was his hair.
“You wouldn’t forget him,” she said, “because he had very bright pink hair. He was a different kind of guy.”
Hill, now 36, doesn’t sport the pink hair any longer, although he remembers having his yearbook photo taken at Westark, pink hair and all. His publicity photo shot after arriving in California, although black-and-white, shows a more clean-cut Hill.
When asked where the carpet creature concept originated, Hill said it evolved from his walks on an almost-deserted boardwalk area, thinking you could yell and scream there and no one would know. A friend suggested a movie could be made there.
“We talked about making something, something mysterious, something trying to get out of society,” he said.” A monkey wouldn’t be natural to the city and, in thinking about other things that would be, we thought of garbage. It didn’t take much longer to wonder what would happen if a big roll of carpet came to life. Stupid sells — if it’s done right.”
The storyline shows an abandoned roll of carpet, angered and rejected, coming to life and going on a killing spree. A couple of tabloid journalists hunt it down to expose it to the world.
Hill said he had no trouble getting actors or actresses to audition for parts in the movie.
“It’s easy,” he said. “They have several tabloids here, such as the Hollywood Reporter and Backstage West newspapers. You simply put an ad in there, and you’re flooded with responses.”
His male lead is Billy Minogue, who came in, auditioned, and got the part. Female lead is Roxanne Arvizu, a Playboy bunny, who Hill said has a degree in theatre.
Hill doesn’t want to mislead anyone about the intended audience for the DVD. He said it might look like a movie that kids would want to see, what with the title and the storyline, but it’s not. He also said, if he had to rate it himself, he’d give it a “double R” because of the violence and nudity.
“I must have been in my ‘violence is art’ phase,” Hill said. “If I had a 12-year-old son, I wouldn’t let him see it. If you’re in college, you should be able to watch it, but I’d keep children away from it.”
Hill went to high school in Shreveport, joined the military, moved to Dallas after that, and then ended up in Fort Smith and in college classes. Hill’s mother, Valerie Hill, still lives in Fort Smith. Valerie Hill had even lived in Fort Smith when she was younger, spending her senior year at St. Anne’s Academy.
“I consider this home now,” said Valerie Hill, who had lived several places and then moved back to Fort Smith shortly before Jeff joined her. Valerie Hill even assisted behind the scenes with one of the college shows when her son said they were short of help one time.
She was also in Los Angeles for one of her son’s showings of the DVD.
“The movie people who saw it in L.A. said it would appeal mainly to those in late teens and 20s,” she said, “maybe into their 30s…If you get to be 52, you might thing it’s silly, but it was shown in L.A. and people were just roaring with laughter. You think it’s going to be scary, but it turns out you giggle through all of it. I think young people would probably appreciate the humor to it.”
Valerie Hill even accompanied her son when they took the film to a lab for color adjustments and went along to help place posters in theatres. She’s proud of what her son has accomplished, but she’s not surprised.
“He’s very talented,” she said. “He’s got a lot of potential.”
Valerie Hill said her son, even as a child, showed determination.
“When that kid got something in his mind, he wouldn’t let it go,” she said. “When he starts a project, he stays with it — rain or shine. He’s devoted and dedicated, I’ll say that. I’m expecting him to say any day he’s writing another one.”
Blockbuster has the DVD for rental in its stores in Fort Smith, Fayetteville, Springdale, Joplin and Springfield.
| Article by: Sondra LaMar, Director of Public Relations |
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