By Joe Sheller / Guest Column
The Corridor may not be on the brink of becoming the new Hollywood, but just this month, “Amelia 2.0,” a movie starring local actress Angela Billman in the title role, had its premiere at Collins Road Theatres in Marion.
If you haven’t, I urge you to see the movie. It’s a thought-provoking story based on a hit Theatre Cedar Rapids play, “The Summerland Project,” for one thing. For another, it’ll provide any Corridor resident with a thrill to see local locations in juxtaposition with a seasoned Hollywood cast.
It’s not the first time Eastern Iowa has been on the big screen, of course. The “Field of Dreams” introduced moviegoers to the state back in 1989, and another regional baseball film, “The Final Season,” was released in 2007. The sleeper comedy “Cedar Rapids” debuted in 2011 – although much of the movie was actually shot in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to the chagrin of local audiences.
A 2014 Des Moines Register story, “The Ultimate List of Iowa Movies,” documents many other interesting Iowa movie references. I did not remember, for example, that in the 1997 blockbuster, “Titanic,” the fictional main character Rose had moved on to later life in Cedar Rapids.
Of all of those movies, “Amelia 2.0” is the most fantastical. The science fiction work puts the city of Cedar Rapids in some near-future imagined reality, where, for example, our downtown public library becomes a stand-in for the headquarters of a robot manufacturing operation.
From pan shots over the Cedar River to the clear shout-out to Theatre Cedar Rapids, the movie was fun to watch for its portrayal of an alternate universe using the actual city.
It’s also interesting how the play, “The Summerland Project,” grew to the point where it became a movie. Local enthusiasm for the play and movie helped, according to its creators.
In an interview with KGAN this month, Director Adam Orton credited the local “creative community” with making the movie happen. After all, the director, writer (playwright Rob Merritt) and star all hail from the Corridor.
“I would say if this wasn’t such a Cedar Rapids-centric project, that the thing wouldn’t have happened,” Orton told KGAN.
The movie came to be despite a lack of state aid. A 2011 scandal caused the closing of the Iowa Film Office, which gave out tax incentives to entice movies to be made in the state – part of the reason “Cedar Rapids” was filmed in Michigan, and not in its namesake town.
That lack of state support is one reason Orton doesn’t predict a movie renaissance in the Creative Corridor, although he also told KGAN that he thinks some seeds for future local film projects may have been planted by “Amelia 2.0.”
While I like the depth of the movie, and think Ms. Billman does a convincing job with the difficult acting challenge of seeming to be both a robot and human, one less positive observation is that the movie fits into the entertainment industry’s instinctive distrust of corporate America. In the movie, much of the conflict is driven by the raw greed of a corporate monolith known as Wesley Enterprises.
Bashing the amoral voracity of American business isn’t exactly new ground for the movie industry, and it wasn’t the best aspect of this story.
Despite that, “Amelia 2.0” is a watchable, worthwhile film. To me, it’s the best recent fictional depiction of Iowa, let alone Cedar Rapids, that I’ve seen, partly because it’s not tied up in trying to tell an “Iowa” story, but rather explore more universal issues.
So even if the local movie industry remains nascent, “Amelia 2.0” is evidence that calling this area the “Creative Corridor” goes beyond hype. Here, we do create new and interesting things in media.
Joe Sheller is an associate professor of communication and journalism at Mount Mercy University in Cedar Rapids. He can be reached at jsheller@mtmercy.edu.
