By Joshua A. Peck
A team of ambitious young filmmakers and actors are bringing their best movie work to downtown Clarkesville next week.
A cast of locally well-known actors star in “Mirror Madness,” a short film by Demorest filmmaker and photographer Carson Sprinkle. The film will show at Habersham Community Theater on Friday, Sept. 23 at 7 p.m., and the evening will include a blooper reel, interviews with the local talent, and some Q and A to give the cast and crew a chance to interact. Admission is free.
The stars of “Mirror Madness” are local actors LeslieAnn Khoury, Jadon Williams, and Zoe Simmons, who among them have been in every recent stage offering of the Habersham Community Theater – “Drowsy Chaperone,” “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” “Chronicles of Narnia,” and “Big Fish,” to name a few, as well as the upcoming musical, “The Addams Family.” They say the professionally filmed, mysterious 20-minute movie will enthrall the audience and give them a good deal to think about.
Brothers Sam and Randy Warren, also HCT mainstays, wrote and co-directed the movie, respectively.
When you ask the cast and crew what the film is about, you get the elliptical answer right off the poster: “After an introverted young woman with a complicated job buys some drugs at a house party, she starts seeing a creepy reflection of herself that begins to torment her on a daily basis.” The actors say the film is suspenseful, but not scary, and is appropriate for all ages. None of them would give away the twist ending that they will surprise and please the audience.
The audience will recognize quite a bit of the scenery; the film was made at a house on Lake Seed and at an antique store in Clayton, along with a private residence belonging to the family of two of the production crew. “Everyone involved was from around here,” Khoury says. “I think people will enjoy that.”
Khoury, an accomplished actress who most recently played Sally in “Charlie Brown,” has her eyes on an eventual theater career, but like any sensible artist has a backup plan: she’s fascinated by marine biology and is weighing applying to the University of Georgia for the U.’s program in that specialty.
Williams, an admitted realist, is focused on his business degree at Liberty University, which he attends online. He expects to end up in some part of the real estate business, probably of the commercial variety. But for the time being, his focus is on his fledgling movie career. Asked about the difference between stage and screen work, he jumps right to the obvious; the camera misses nothing.
“On the stage, everything you do has to be big, or they can’t see it in the last row,” Williams says. “On screen, you raise an eyebrow, and everyone sees it.”
Linda Williams, president of Habersham Community Theater, was thrilled when asked to screen “Mirror Madness.”
“Part of HCT’s mission is to offer opportunities for personal growth through the use of creative talents in drama, music, art, and dance and to contribute to the cultural enrichment of the community,” she said. “Almost everyone involved with Mirror Madness is an HCT alumnus, and we are proud to encourage them in their endeavors.”
Sprinkle has made three previous films, but this is the first time that one of his works – or any local film, for that matter – has been screened in Clarkesville for the public, as far as he knows.
“It’s just a really family-friendly event,” Sprinkle says. “In Clarkesville, you don’t have that many film opportunities. I really hope it will spark other people’s creativity, too…we should be doing more of this.”