If there's one thing that has become apparent in Hollywood's currently on-going downward spiral toward the depths of Dante's Hell, it's that money and film productions the size of Utah do not necessarily spell quality or entertainment. As a matter of fact, as the decade draws to a close, I have found quite the opposite to be true. With the 1998 releases of Deep Impact, Six Days Seven Nights, The Avengers, Godzilla, What Dreams May Come, and The Mask of Zorro, America was presented with six films whose combined budgets skyrocketed passed the $550 million mark but whose final products paled in comparison to three nearly unheard of films Cube, Hellcab, and Happiness, a contingent whose combined budgets may not have passed the $1 million mark. The hope of the future in Hollywood is the young, renegade, independent filmmakers who focus on telling a structured story and including a poignant message in their productions, rather than wasting their time spending hundreds of hours attempting to figure out how to best create realistic looking computer generated lizards. Chicago's own Eric Battersby, a product of the Cinema Studies program at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, is a rising member of this new breed of filmmakers.

I originally learned of Battersby and his debut feature film, Fool's Gold, while doing some research on Chicago's Hollywood connections. After speaking to several members of the Chicago Film Office, including office director Rich Moskal, I was told that Fool's Gold was in Chicago, shooting on the weekends. Interested in getting more information about the production, I was given the Fool's Gold web-page address.

I simply could not believe my eyes as I read Battersby's introductory paragraph about the purpose of Fool's Gold:

Exactly.

I shook my head, reread the paragraph, and thought, "finally, here is someone who gets it". And ëget it' Battersby does.

Interested in the idea of making movies since high school, Battersby recalls how he became enraptured with film. "I was a senior, speaking with a student a year older than I," Battersby said, "He told me he was studying film and I was blown away. I said ëDamn, film? That's a job? You can get paid for that?' and from then on, I've been on this path."

This path has lead to the creation of Fool's Gold, a Chicago film-in-the-making.

Inspired by the fact that Battersby went to the predominately black Proviso East High School in Maywood Fool's Gold is a film that is designed to take a lot of the negative stigmatism out of people's beliefs about different ethnic groups.

"From 8:00 until 3:00 everyday I was a minority," Battersby said of his high school experience. "Before I attended ëEast' I had heard a lot of horror stories. People told me not to go into the bathrooms or I'd be knifed, and not to go alone to certain places, but none of it turned out to be true. There was this perception that was totally different from the reality of the situation." And that is precisely the reality that Battersby is intent on exposing in Fool's Gold.

Actors Danny Belrose and Eric Garcia star in Fool's Gold as two friends who have just recently graduated from a suburban Chicago high school not unlike Proviso East. Harmon wakes up one morning "completely jazzed" and the two decide to venture into the city. Belrose, who is white, and Garcia, who plays a Filipino, take the El into the heart of Chicago's west side, exit, and after taking a wrong turn down the wrong alley at the wrong time, run into a rather unfriendly gang near California and Lake. After a brief altercation complete with gun fire, the two suburbanites flee and take refuge in a warehouse that is home to an otherwise homeless man, who lords them with a little advice, and ultimately helps them get back to their own homes.

Despite appearances to the contrary, Fool's Gold is neither a movie like Stephen Hopkins' 1993 release Judgement Night ("At first when I heard about it, I was pissed," Battersby laughed. "Then I saw the movie and thought, ëif you want to turn out crap like that, it's okay with me."), nor your stereotypical ëfish out of water' story.

"There is a parallel story going on too," Battersby stated. "One story involves the two friends and their history, while the parallel story is about one of the gang members in the gang that confronts the leads. Initially it seems that their two worlds are completely separate, but the truth is that they are very similar to one another."

The actual production details of Fool's Gold are as broad and grandiose as the message in Battersby's screenplay. Shooting his debut film on a sizeable number of different locations, ten, with a large cast of 30, Battersby's production covers all the bases. "Hiring an experienced cast was the key," Battersby said. "Good people go a long way towards creating an outstanding product."

Obtaining the funding to finish principal production is, of course, one of the hardest facets of the business. All totaled, the Fool's Gold budget is around $100,000, which isn't a large amount compared to the major and minor studio releases, but is still a large figure on its own, especially considering that Battersby is raising the money himself.

However, nothing can compare to the actual joy, or pain, of setting out to film a trailer to show to potential investors, as Battersby and crew did last summer.

"There was one weekend where we shot 36 of the 48 hours available in the weekend," Battersby said. "That was a little tough. We learned that one of our leads is diabetic, so we had to take that into consideration too." Battersby pauses before finishing semi-facetiously, "no one died while we were shooting. We were happy about that."

The absolute hardest part of the production came with the unexpected nature of filming a feature film. "Unless you've done a big film, you don't understand the scope of what you're doing. That's the toughest part," Battersby said.

"You've got a crew of 10-15 people to take care of and you have all these actors coming up to you, you just have to be smart enough and in command enough to get the respect of your cast and crew."

Having a screenplay as solid as Fool's Gold certainly helped Battersby, but it came down to this, "If you're not at the stage in your life where you don't know exactly what you are trying to do, and exactly what you want to accomplish, you're better off not making the movie. You will fail."

And failure is precisely what Battersby has avoided, time and time again, embodying the spirit, beliefs, and determination that Hollywood has so sorely been lacking in recent years.

Fool's Gold will re-shoot several key sequences and finish principal photography this summer. We will visit with Battersby and company on set in June and continue to report on his path toward the completion of Fool's Gold and submission to The Sundance Film Festival organizers come October.

jake lever