State-Journal.com - Sellus' dream comes to the big screen

Photo By Image submittedA rough cut of “The Dangers of Dreaming” played at film festivals coast to coast in 2007. “We were nominated for best sound track, best overall cast, best drama. We won an award for directing and won a couple of audience awards in best of festivals,” Sellus Wilder said. “We played in New York City and LA the same day. That was pretty exciting. The closest place we played to Frankfort was in Cincinnati and the only place in Kentucky we played was in Paducah.”

Sellus Wilder

Long before Sellus Wilder decided to run successfully for city commissioner in 2008, he wrote a 100-page script for a movie.

It was a special senior project in 2004 at Beloit College in southern Wisconsin, “where you could easily walk from campus to Illinois,” says Sellus, 28, sitting at a back table in Kentucky Coffeetree Café Friday morning.

He earned an “A” in a “one-person class I created for myself. I wrote the screenplay very much for the sake of producing a film in Frankfort that summer.”

Several of his college and hometown friends met in the capital that summer to work on the movie.

Most of them will be returning to downtown Frankfort this Friday and Saturday for the 7 p.m. premiere of Sellus’ first film, “The Dangers of Dreaming,” at the Grand Theatre. It combines drama and romance.

The $10,000, 87-minute movie “is full of familiar faces and locations,” says Sellus, a leading actor.

It’s unrated but would be a PG-13 because of some violence and adult language.

“We’re promoting it pretty heavily and hoping for two sellout crowds,” Sellus says.

Sellus plays Max, a young man just out of college who develops the unfortunate ability to predict the future. His strange dreams include repeated visions of a young man in a coffin and his friends getting killed on the side of the road by an eye-patched gunman.

The dreams also lead to turmoil with his new girlfriend, gun theft, escape from police and a long foot chase by a thug through downtown and the St. Clair parking garage.

The audience will see lots of beer drinking in The Dragon Pub, police interrogations in the McClure Building, scenes from Frankfort Cemetery, Liberty Hall, the Capitol grounds, Pic-Pac parking lot and many downtown and South Frankfort streets.

There’s also Charles Riggs’ red and yellow house on West Fourth Street, the Singing Bridge, Rick’s White Light Diner and Mikes Guns & Archery.

Besides Sellus, other key Frankfort actors include Karen and Russ Hatter, who worked with him in high school theater; gun advocate and instructor Riggs, who plays Reno, a black market gun dealer; Ross Wallace, who plays Reno’s thug; Peter Ballman, a young detective; and Jackson King and Sarah Bishop, two college friends leaving Frankfort.

Frankfort’s Sean McNally, a Centre College graduate and longtime friend of Sellus, is co-producer and cinematographer.

Local historian Russ Hatter plays a veteran detective. His wife, Karen, a Frankfort High School teacher, plays a bag lady that Sellus meets late at night in the Pic-Pac parking lot.

She also wears an eye patch, “and has this gift in which she can look at him and he sees his future,” Russ says. “So Sellus tries to make contact with her at different points.”

The Hatters saw the first draft of the movie, “and I thought it was really good,” says Russ. “It has some great shots of Frankfort. I haven’t seen the new version.”

“Charles Riggs did a great job. In his Hawaiian shirt and shorts, he was a bad guy.”

Riggs’ daughter, Julia, is also a graduate of Beloit College and a friend of Sellus.

“Julia, who lives in Paris, would have been in the movie if she could have been here but she was in France,” Sellus says.

Russ says it was fun working with Sellus, a former theater student, “and film is a totally different animal. I worked with him a couple of nights for three or four hours in an old room of the McClure Building for about 15 seconds in the film. We probably did my scene 25 times.”

Karen says, “It was really neat being with a former student and having him be in charge. He’s extremely talented. It was a real positive experience for me just learning about the process of making the movie.

“It’s easier on the actor in a movie because there are so many breaks.”

At FHS, Sellus “was always very, very talented but was sometimes distracted,” Karen says. “Now he’s an extremely focused mature adult.”

Ten years from now she believes Sellus can look back on his first movie “and be pleased with his product and the response he’s gotten since then. He will continue to grow and evolve and get better.”

Eric Cockley, who works in the county planning and zoning office, was one of many local names listed in the movie credits.
He saw the first draft in 2007, “and it was strange watching a movie and recognizing half of the actors in it.

“I don’t recall actually finding myself in it,” Cockley says. “I didn’t land one of the coveted speaking roles. I was an extra in a farm party scene.

“I thought it was pretty professional considering the budget and somebody’s first go at it. I was impressed. The cinematography was good.”

Sellus says he’s “excited but a little nervous” thinking about the upcoming premiere. He says “Dangers of Dreaming” probably could have been released last year.

“But we always envisioned premiering at the Grand Theatre. We wanted to wait until the Grand opened.”

The $5 million renovated arts center on St. Clair Street opened Sept. 25.

Sellus just returned home Thursday evening from two weeks in Los Angeles and Hollywood. He says he goes there once or twice a year “to make the scene. The nature of show business requires some networking.”

Sellus says he’s committed to making movies in Frankfort, although he knows that goes against conventional wisdom.

“My dream is to be able to develop a sustainable filmmaking career from Franklin County,” he says. “I know it can be done.”
Just out of college in 2004, Sellus says his friends “had two incentives to make the movie. First we wanted to learn how to do it, to get that real practical full-blown experience under our belt.

“And the other was to create something we could use as a steppingstone to other projects, to create a calling card. That’s served us pretty well so far.”

A rough cut of the movie played at film festivals coast to coast in 2007, Sellus says.

“We were nominated for best sound track, best overall cast, best drama. We won an award for directing and won a couple of audience awards in best of festivals.

“We played in New York City and L.A. the same day. That was pretty exciting. The closest place we played to Frankfort was in Cincinnati and the only place in Kentucky we played was in Paducah.”

He says the first summer of filming was grueling. A lot of it was done after midnight and at sunrise while most of Frankfort slept.

“At one point I stayed up three days and nights straight through.”

He says he’s “very proud of the film as a first effort. Our process improved a lot as we shot it. Some scenes are well polished and some are quite amateur. I think the foot chase (near the end) is well polished.

“Every film absolutely needs humor and I think we have some nice moments of humor.”

His favorite shot is a 9-minute segment where Sellus and a college friend, Ollie Collins, converse for two blocks on West Main and St. Clair streetsa at 3 a.m.

“The funny thing is we did multiple takes of it but it was the first one we ended up keeping,” he says.

“The whole photography is really beautiful and I think there’s a lot of good acting in the movie,” Sellus says. “I feel a little embarrassed by my performance just because I know I could do a lot better.

“But I had so many other concerns (as director). I was thinking more about ‘the scene’ than my performance.”

He says Collins and Emily Tate - who played Elise, his girlfriend - were outstanding actors.

Tate went to Centre with McNally, the co-producer.

Sellus says the movie “in a lot of ways is based on the serenity prayer. That was kind of the heart of it, in that no matter what your circumstances are, no matter what position you feel fate has boxed you into, you always have a choice in what you do and how you react to things.”

While shooting the film, “anytime we needed to use a certain location, we found the entire community to be very supportive,” Sellus says. “Everybody seemed to be pretty excited we were doing it and were happy to help and accommodate us.”

The movie has plenty of flashbacks.

“We tried to make it clear enough that you could enjoy it and get most of it,” Sellus says. “But it’s made to be watched more than once.

“We tried to make it deep enough so you would go back and keep discovering things you hadn’t seen before.”

After the Friday and Saturday showings, there will be brief Q&A’s with the cast, Sellus says.

And Sellus - the actor, director, producer, writer and editor - says he won’t be arriving in front of the Grand in a tuxedo and limousine.

“It would be more like a bicycle than a limo,” he says, laughing.

The Dangers of Dreaming

>Tickets are $8 at Poor Richard’s Books for the Friday, Dec. 18 and Saturday, Dec. 19 premiering of Sellus Wilder’s first film, “The Dangers of Dreaming,” at the Grand Theatre. The movie starts at 7 p.m.

>The Dragon Pub and the Kentucky Coffeetree Café will be featuring musicians from the movie throughout the weekend. A full schedule of weekend events can be found at www.selluswilder.com.

>The movie is dedicated to the late Frankfort musician Scott Robinson, whose songs are featured prominently in the soundtrack.

>DVDs of the movie will be available to purchase at the Grand. The cost is around $12.