Local producer finds making movie not easy

Judith Salkin • The Desert Sun • January 13, 2009

One thing Kim Waltrip says she has learned about filmmaking: “Shooting is the easy part.”

Sitting in the shade at a local Starbucks, Waltrip of WonderStar Productions and screenwriter-director Charles Evered reminisce about the two years it took to get their film, “Adopt A Sailor,” in front of an audience.

Their excitement is building as this weekend's hometown screenings at the Palm Springs International Film Festival approach.

Waltrip's career track has taken her from modeling to acting to serving as district manager for Rep. Mary Bono Mack's, R-Palm Springs, congressional office. She's new to movie producing.

Evered teaches theater at UC Riverside (he taught classes at the Palm Desert campus, too). This is his first time as a director.

“Adopt A Sailor” began as a 10-minute staged reading piece for the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. It starred Bebe Neuwirth, who also is in the film, along with Peter Coyote and relative newcomer Ethan Peck, grandson of legendary actor Gregory Peck.

In early 2007, Evered got the screenplay into Waltrip's hands.

“He sent it to me in an e-mail,” she said. “I called him and said, ‘We've got to make this movie.'”

They pulled together financing, cast and permission from the Navy to shoot on deck of a carrier during Fleet Week in May 2007.

“We would have had to wait a year if we hadn't,” Waltrip said.

The rest of the film was shot in the desert at a home dressed to look like an upscale New York City apartment. The sets were built in Waltrip's living room, Evered said.

The grassroots production team may have lacked experience, but that didn't stop the cast from signing up.

“I looked at the material and it's a great script,” Coyote said from his Bay Area home. “It was so alive and witty. I thought, ‘I have to do this.'”

Working with a first-time director wasn't a problem for the actor.

“Working with Charles was like heaven,” Coyote said. “He wrote the play, he's lived it, but he has the sense to trust his actors. He direction was sparse and sure.”

Peck, in his first starring role, plays an innocent sailor “adopted” for a weekend by a wealthy New York couple, played by Coyote and Neuwirth.

“I really responded to this material,” the 22-year-old said from New York.

“(My character) is a virgin in every sense of the word,” he said. “He's such a bright light and so innocent. But he's put into a very uncomfortable situation with these two people who are parent figures.”

Since wrapping “Sailor,” Waltrip and Evered have collaborated on a short film and are working on a distribution deal.

A positive response at their hometown film festival would be the first step to achieving that.