Get Ready For Your Close-Up, Hartland

One local resident is looking to put Hartland on the Hollywood map. Michael Clark, a writer, director and actor, has some big plans for the small village with its historic buildings and tucked-away location.

Clark and his company, Scallywag Entertainment is looking to potentially film two upcoming movie projects in and around locations in Hartland.

“My office is in Hartland, so what a great home base and there’s just so much to offer here,” Clark said. “We’ll be needing some extras, especially for Zomedy."

Clark, who has recently worked on movies such as Reel Steel, Red Dawn and The Ides of March, wrote Zomedy in six weeks after six months of letting the idea play in his head. He will also be directing the comedy/horror film.

“It’s your basic chemical spill in a lake,” he said. “It's Pulp Fiction meets Zombieland but it’s all about the characters. It’s a comedy so even if we took the zombies out, it would probably still be a funny little story.”

The script did attract the attention of a company in Los Angeles, but the deal fell through because Clark wants to be able to direct the movie himself.

“We’ve been trying to get it off the ground for a couple years,” he said. “It’s been a struggle and it's still not set in stone yet.”

Several Hollywood stars with Michigan ties have already shown interest in Zomedy with at least one giving a letter-of-intent to do the Michigan-based film. Funding, however, is now Clark and business partner and producer Steve Gast’s next hurdle as they try to a pull together a budget that is large enough to do their movie justice.

With the loss of the Michigan Film Incentive, Clark says that finding investors for his film is becoming harder.

“Snyder really pulled out the rug from under us,” he said. “Nobody even wants to look at Michigan." 

Still determined to make “his baby,” Scallywag Entertainment is currently in talks to produce Project X, as they call it, as a way to help fund Zomedy. 

“We were pretty far along and then that (Michigan Film Incentive) got pulled out, so we had to start from scratch,” Clark said. “Project X is another project we’re working on and that’s another film we want to do in Hartland.”

Project X is a new idea for an interactive game that is also a movie where the viewer gets to choose how some scenes play out.

“It’s all video but when you get to end of the scene, you get to choose what path to go down,” Clark said.

Collaborating with Future Help Designs in Pontiac, Project X will be a much smaller production with only five or six actors but Clark is hoping to start filming the slasher-type movie around Hartland this summer. Pre-production could start as early as April if all their funding comes through.

"If that works, then hopefully we’ll film Zomedy next summer," Clark said.

Deciding to try and make the film in Hartland is exciting according to Clark, who has lived in the area since 1999 with his wife and two sons, who both attend Hartland schools.

"It's good publicity, it would put Hartland on the map," he said. "Everyone would get a thanks at the end and filmed entirely in Hartland, Michigan. Plus I live here -- so what better place?"

With scenes that include burning cars and mobs full of zombies walking through town, Clark says that the village of Hartland could provide exactly the right type of atmosphere for what they are looking for. His partner agrees, according to Clark, who said Gast thought the town was "perfect" during his tour of potential film locations. 

Fundraising efforts for Zomedy will also continue with Kickstarter, a campaign tool Clark has used in the past, which lets fans contribute to films with certain dollar amounts in return for things such as signed movie posters, DVDs and possibly even a walk-on role in the movie. 

“One guy who gave a $1,000 got to be an executive producer on the film," Clark said of one of his previous campaigns.

Raising money, although not his favorite part, is just part of the job for this filmmaker who has no formal training and intially went to art school and slowly transitioned to making movies. 

"I tell people all time, I’ve been in training since I saw Star Wars," he said. "Movies are the best because it’s everything. It's art, it's music, it's everything. Over the years, I've said there’s only one medium if you want to do everything, and that’s movies."