Photos
It has been years since Corbin Bernsen put acting aside to sit in the director’s chair (although, FULL DISCLOSURE: he remains Videogum’s Chief Legal Counsel*), but he isn’t content simply to direct hollow entertainment. His movies often have a message, and in some cases, as with his new movie, they have the even more ambitious goal of CHANGING THE WORLD. From the Hollywood Reporter:
[Corbin] Bernsen is directing “25 Hill,” a family-friendly production with a budget of about $500,000 that begins shooting Wednesday in the town once nicknamed the Rubber City. He aims to save its nearly 75-year-old racing league, the All-American Soap Box Derby.
In September, Bernsen read an article in USA Today about how the derby had a debt of $623,000 with a local bank and was facing extinction.
“The derby used to be this huge event; 50,000 people used to show up, and Chevrolet was a huge sponsor,” Bernsen said Monday from his production offices in Akron. “But the times, the economy, the kids got into other interests. Sponsorship has really dwindled. It’s a nonprofit, and it needs money.”
Right. Definitely. We have got to save the soap box derby. And this is definitely the way to to do it. I just feel like the economic crisis and the two wars America continues to find itself deeply mired in have distracted people from the really important issues: underfunded non-profit soap box derbies that hold nostalgic importance to Corbin Bernsen. This is a real wake up call. More about this real wake up call after the jump:
Bernsen decided to do what he did with “Rust,” the faith-based movie he directed last year in Saskatchewan: help raise financing through grassroots community efforts and make a movie, using professional actors and professional crews, on a community level.
Bernsen wrote “Hill,” the tale of an 11-year-old boy whose derby dreams are left in pieces when his soldier father is killed in Afghanistan. The boy teams up with a father figure whose own son, a firefighter, died in the line of duty, and the two help each other find redemption and revive the derby.
“You know those actors you hear about and you go, ‘Is he still alive?’ That’s what the derby is,” Bernsen said. “The idea is to show that the derby is alive and well. This is not a nostalgic period movie.”
OK, well, I’m not even going to touch that last quote. I’m not wearing my Self-Awareness Gloves! I might get Sad Irony on me! But I will touch the fact that Corbin Bernsen raised $500,000 through grassroots community efforts to make his movie about the soap box derby in order to “save” the soap box derby, when he clearly could have raised just a little bit more money and CUT OUT THE MIDDLE MAN. I know that you have to spend money to make money, but sometimes you don’t. I would rest my case, but I will just have my lawyer, Corbin Bernsen, rest it for me.
I recuse myself!
I do appreciate that Corbin Bernsen tied his story (because HE WROTE THIS?!?!?!) to the war in Afghanistan. I think that is really going to bring home the troops need for people to care more about the soap box derby. Corbin Bernsen: patriot, hero.
*No he doesn’t.
 |
 |
“from his production offices in Akron.”
I rest MY case.
Corbin Bernsen – actor, snowglobe aficionado, and hero. A slow clap for you, good sir.
Got him, Gabe… Corbin Bernsen will think twice about making a little passion project next year.
Wait, so is the Soap Box Derby an actor acting in this movie about the Soap Box Derby?
My god, why can’t I get LA Law on DVD? I just want to see the cold open where Leland McKinze’s girlfriend (ST: TNG’s Dr. Pulaski!) falls down the elevator shaft. YouTube, here I come! So long, workday.
In case anybody else needs it, um, spoiler alert I guess? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov7aTXqMKfY
“Bernsen is directing “25 Hill,” a family-friendly production with a budget of about $500,000″
But if you remove the topless dancing and senseless violence, you remove the soul of soap-box derby racing!
To be fair, Rust looks like a faith-based upper, pulled tight in a ham-fisted hug.
I bet it’s Kirk Cameron’s favorite movie that he’s not in.
We don’t need anymore family-friendly anythings.
You know, I like this guy(big Psychhead over here), and I was all set to not hate this and just say do your thing, Corbin Bernsen, but then I got to the part about his previous “faith-based”(ugh!) movie, and then the synopsis for this one, and now I don’t know what to think. No, I do. I think you should just give the soapbox derby people the money, Corbin Bernsen.
“I make movies other people are too scared (read: indebted) to make.” – CB
It’s all going downhill from here!
It’s a little joke we have within the soap box derby community.
Corbin needs to pump his breaks.
That’s a little joke we have at the Toyota Motor Corporation.
Ugh, brakes. More coffee!
where are all these superdevout, movie-funding catholics hanging out? i dont know any. i guess they are in ohio.
Malibu California
It’s all very well that it’s tied to Afghanistan and all – but this will not be a proper soapbox movie without a rich-kid villain with an awesome car that shoots nails out the back and has spinning blades coming out of its hubcaps.
Yeah. Or good guys with a car made out of stolen washing machine parts and old checker boards.
I can’t wait for the mid-race flashback, during the Derby Championship, of the boy’s fallen soldier dad wistfully explaining the magic of derby racing to him.
“A lot of people think derby racing is all about rolling downhill. They’re the same people who tell you that your dreams are just that – dreams. But I’ll tell you what both dreams and derby racing having in common: sometimes, all they take is a little push.”
*boy grips the steering wheel, steels his gaze, runs the Rubber City non-Christian bully off the road, and wins the derby race, honoring his father’s proud legacy.*
Wait, did you get a copy of the script, because I really think that this is a direct quotation from the movie.
“You know those actors you hear about and you go, ‘Is he still alive?’ That’s what the derby is,” Wake up call to Corbin Bernsen. Every time you hear that quote, they are probably talking about you, not a soap box derby.
Ah! This is so weird! I work at a film financing/production company, and we received this script a few weeks ago. Not only does it suck, but he wants the money invested to act as donations rather than an investment. That’s just poor business sense!
He wants to keep the $45 in profits it makes all for himself?
preemptive wmoat nomination – done.
Just asking for a friend: Is it possible to execute remote deinstalls of Final Draft?
Didn’t this film revive the sport?
haha! “Rubber City.” TWCBS
Who wants to fund my stickball league?
My friend who grew up in Brooklyn is seriously depressed that the Brooklyn kids today don’t play stickball like he did, and his father before him and his father’s father. These kids with their cell phones and their XBoxes and their French lessons and their organic PB&Js and their Sanskrit lessons and their guns.
I’m not sure this is exactly a surprising move for a guy with an entire warehouse of snowglobes he’s collected.
I must recuse myself from poking any kind of fun at Mr Bernsen, as five years ago while visiting China, I was approached in Tiananmen Square and mistaken for him. I was photographed and shook hands, and I felt like a million dollars for the rest of the trip. So, thank you, Mr Bernsen! You save all the derbies you want, however you want.
JE RECUSE!
How exactly does a soapbox derby incur a debt of $623 000?
Cocaine. Lots of cocaine.
From eighth grade to the middle of my junior year in high school I would watch almost every soap opera on TV. I remember him on General Hospital. In fact, I will never forget.
I remember that! He played Carly’s dad, although I can’t remember what happened to him. He probably died. Everyone on that show has to die at least once.
When I was a kid I used to read Mad Magazine. There was a joke in it about Corbin Bernsen, and I asked my parents who he was. They said, “Oh, he was in some shows”. Why can’t you stay that guy Corbin Bernsen? That guy in some shows?
He can spend all of this time saving soap derbies but he can’t get in front of a groundball? DORN!!!!
PSYCH (thats the show he is on right now)
I shall brook no disrespect of the awesomeness that is Akron, Corbin Bernsen-funded faith-based dreck or not. In addition to being the Rubber City and home of the Soap Box Derby, this fine, fine municipality has provided the world with Lebron James, Alcoholics Anonymous, and more polymer engineering than you can shake a teflon-coated stick at. So y’all haterz can SUCK IT.
I think we need more people like Corbin Bernson in the world. The reason that there are so many kids on the street corner anymore is because people have abandoned activities like the Soap Box Derby. You want to know why so many kids are so lazy anymore, or why they don’t have any ambition or ideas, all you have to do is think about what this movie is about. When the Soap Box Derby was big they didn’t have all this crime, they didn’t have all the trouble that they did with the children of this country. Trust and believe if you have your children in an activity, any activity you wouldn’t have to worry about where they are. You would know.