Premiering 'Melvin': Menlo Park filmmaker debuts 'Planting Melvin' at film festival Premiering 'Melvin': Menlo Park filmmaker debuts 'Planting Melvin' at film festival (March 02, 2005)

By Rebecca Wallace

Almanac Staff Writer

As Kari Nevil was writing the script for her movie "Planting Melvin," the same CD played over and over. It was tranquil music in a Japanese style, the weightless sounds of wind instruments and acoustic guitars.

The music made it into the movie, and its mood wove itself throughout her script.

The feature-length digital movie, which Ms. Nevil wrote, produced and directed, has its painful topics: a woman fleeing a violent marriage, and a dying man revealing a secret from World War II. But the two forge a friendship and find peace through each other, she says.

"The tone created by the music was quiet and calm," she says during a recent interview at her JuneBug Films office at 1050 Chestnut St. in downtown Menlo Park. "It's about the solitude of Billie healing herself from domestic violence and Melvin accepting his impending death."

Some of that harmony hovers over the interview. Behind hip dark-framed glasses, Ms. Nevil's eyes gleam as she describes the movie, and she speaks with the easy, friendly poise of someone who has found her niche in the working world.

The office, too, has the confidence of personality, filled with curios she picked up as potential props: a Corona typewriter, a vintage Kodak camera, a parlor lamp with two green globes of glass.

The Zen feel turns into celebration when Karen MacKellar, who co-produced the movie with Donna Garrison, bursts into the office with the final version of "Planting Melvin."

"The baby has arrived!" Ms. MacKellar announces, pulling a blue box out of a paper bag.

Ms. Nevil beams. "There she is."

The last threads on the 99-minute movie have been tied up just in time for its premiere at the Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose on March 4 and 5. It's also just been accepted into the Hearts and Minds Film Festival in Wilmington, Delaware.

Cinequest shows about 80 features and 70 short films annually. This year, the competition was notably stiff: the festival reportedly received 575 features and 1,202 shorts.

Films come from many countries and different-sized purses; while "Planting Melvin" was made for less than $70,000, others have multi-million-dollar budgets, says programming director Michael Rabehl.

"We loved the spiritual quality of 'Planting Melvin,' and how it portrays women in a positive way, giving the lead character strength to change her life for the better," Mr. Rabehl says.

After Cinequest and Hearts and Minds, Ms. Nevil hopes to keep showing "Planting Melvin" on the film-festival circuit. Then her goal is to make it available through home video rental or on cable television.
Labor of love

Before getting into the movie world, Ms. Nevil was mired in a stint in advertising. "I was successful at writing weight-loss ads for two years," she says wryly, swinging a foot clad in a giraffe-print clog.

Living in Los Angeles in the 1980s, she landed a job in Disney's story department filing scripts. She worked her way up the script ladder: reading scripts, then summarizing, then making recommendations on them.

She moved to London in 1985 and worked on music videos. Then it was back to the Bay Area, where she earned a degree in film and advertising from the Academy of Art College in San Francisco.

Ms. Nevil founded JuneBug Films (named after her late Labrador retriever) in 1990 and produced the 1994 film "At Risk," which starred Vince Vaughn and Randy Travis and was about AIDS in heterosexuals.

She also wrote, produced, and directed 2001's "Your Guardian," about a young woman on a road trip to get answers in her life.

These days, such movies are a labor of love, but JuneBug's main focus is making corporate videos -- for example, about a company's new product.

Fortunately, Ms. Nevil says these projects don't just pay the bills: she gets passionate about them as well. "I love listening to a CEO speak," she says. "These are educated, interesting people."
Let's put on a show

Birds were the enemy on the "Planting Melvin" set. So were barking dogs and the ubiquitous leaf blower.

The movie was made on video (using a Panasonic SDX 900 camera) instead of film, which is about five times as expensive, Ms. Nevil says. If the movie were to get a theatrical release, it would be converted to 35mm film. Despite this cost-saving measure, time was still of the essence.

"Planting Melvin" was shot in 18 days last year at locations including the Atherton train station and friends' Peninsula homes. There wasn't always time to wait for an unwanted sound to stop.

"It was a marching band. It was the neighbors deciding to remodel the kitchen. It was the birds deciding we're interesting to watch," Ms. Nevil says affably. "The sound surgeons had a time of it (cutting sounds out of the film later)."

Life on the set didn't feel rushed, though, says actor Hal Robinson, who played Melvin.

"Kari's enthusiasm is so infectious," he says. "The actors never felt that pressure."

Instead, the project's small scale made for a community theater, let's-put-on-a-show feel, Ms. Nevil says. Friends lent props, costumes, cars and homes, and actors worked for a small stipend.

The informality also meant the actors could suggest script changes to Ms. Nevil, something you typically can't do in a theater ("Excuse me, Mr. Chekhov...").

Mr. Robinson, a veteran stage actor, at one point confessed to Ms. Nevil over brunch that he had trouble with one scene because he didn't feel it rang true to his character. Obligingly, Ms. Nevil changed the dialogue.

"She's extraordinarily generous in that way," Mr. Robinson says.

Was it hard for Ms. Nevil to let go of some control over her story? No, she says, because she trusts her actors. And it's part of the process to mix other opinions into what was once just a screenplay on her computer.

"I love to see what the brave artisans can do with the written word," Ms. Nevil says. Sometimes, she adds with a chuckle, you have to "just point the camera at them and shut up."
SHOWINGS

"Planting Melvin" will be shown at 9:15 p.m. Friday, March 4, and at 1:15 p.m. Saturday, March 5, at the Cinequest Film Festival. The 12-day festival has events at various locations in San Jose; "Planting Melvin" will be shown at the San Jose Repertory Theatre at 101 Paseo de Antonio. For more festival information, call (408) 995-5033 or go to www.cinequest.org.

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