Joe M. O'Connell: April 2013

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Fourth 'Transformers' film to shoot in Texas in June

My report appears in today's Dallas Morning News. It's behind a pay wall, so here it is in its entirety for you.

BY JOE O’CONNELL

Special to The Dallas Morning News

Michael Bay’s fourth big-budget Transformers film will shoot in the Austin area in June, bringing with it requisite car chases, robots and plenty of explosions.

The Austin Film Commission confirmed 3-4 weeks of filming in the small towns of Lockhart, Taylor, Elgin and Pflugerville.

A Taylor bridge over the railroad awaits a robot siege.

A large Austin production office opened in March, but location scouting dates back to last November. There was initial interest in the Circuit of the Americas racetrack southeast of Austin, but instead the Austin Film Commission says the focus is on small towns that reminded Bay of Robert Frank’s 1950s photos collected in the classic book The Americans.

In Taylor, 30 minutes from Austin, a police chase will close downtown and a railroad overpass, said Deby Lannen, the city’s Main Street program manager. A car will be exploded in the city’s Robinson Park. “It’s pretty exciting,” she said.

“I know there will be things exploded in Taylor for sure. Some will be physical effects, some CGI,” said Gary Bond, head of the Austin Film Commission.

Lockhart’s Caldwell County Courthouse square will be another filming location, with Taylor and Lockhart combined into one fiction town on screen. Robots will chase down the good guys throughout Central Texas including in Elgin.

The bulk of the untitled movie is expected to lens overseas in China, where a reality television show will cast some roles. According to the web site ReelChicago, shooting will begin in Chicago in July, presumably after Texas filming ends. The Detroit Free-Press in March reported approval of $20 million in filming incentives on $81.9 million in anticipated spending there.

The first three Transformers films grossed $2.6 billion worldwide with the budget for the last two both in the $200 million range.

No plot has been released for the film, but Mark Wahlberg will star along with Jack Reynor and Nicola Peltz. Wahlberg’s good-guy character’s home will be a farmhouse in Pflugerville. Bay has previously said the film will take a different direction with many new actors.

Bay's production company Platinum Dunes has a history of filming in Central Texas, including 2003's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and its 2006 sequel, plus 2007's The Hitcher.

The latest Transformers film is set for release in June 2014.

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

"Tales alternately gentle, dramatic, surrealistic, that collectively affirm the beauty of being alive, even as they acknowledge that all of us face the necessity of making our own 'evacuation plan.' "
-- Brad Buchholz, Austin American-Statesman

" The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity. "
-- The Texas Observer

"It was very hard for me to put this book down. It carries us through the deepest meaning in life and most painful, most hopeful memories for a wide range of fascinating characters. Based in a hospice, this book could have easily resorted to cheap sensationalism, or whacked us upside the head with stereotypic melodrama, but instead it was respectful, honest, and tender. The characters will stay with you - you may even recognize some of them within your own life. "
-- Award-winning author Carmen Tafolla

"An excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living."
-- Wayne Alan Brenner, The Austin Chronicle

"O’Connell has drawn some colourful and believable characters. The material relating to the hospice and terminal care rings true, all the way to reconciliation and forgiving."
-- Dr. Roger Woodruff, International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care

"The tales are nicely written, and some are quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie."
-- Texas Monthly

“Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice by Joe M. O'Connell is nothing short of remarkable … a novel that walks hand-in-hand with death and yet, somehow, the reader finishes the book feeling inspired to live.”
– The Paisano

"A wonderful blend of lives ordinary but with sometimes extraordinary elements. We all share these stories of life in some way, despite moments of harshness or unforgiving pain. There is always a common thread of humanity and ultimately forgiveness to be found, even if it's in the last moment of life."
-- Elaine Williams, author of A Journey Well Taken

"Reading Evacuation Plan is akin to unwrapping a series of small perfectly-chosen presents. Both human and humane, The book resembles a modern Spoon River Anthology with its vivid, touching glimpses into the lives of those in and around a hospice."
-- Tim McCanlies, screenwriter The Iron Giant, writer/director Secondhand Lions

"In Evacuation Plan Joe O'Connell does for the process of dying what Sherwood Anderson did for middle America in Winesburg, Ohio--he shows us in brief flashes the aching beauty of the grotesque, and shows us how extraordinary small lives and quiet deaths can be."
--John Blair, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winning author of American Standard

"Here's a book so rich with stories of the living, so filled with people's bountiful problems, as well as incidents of wry forgiveness, one realizes over and over the circling forces of life's completeness. It's not a sad tale nor a needless feel-good account but a balanced, sometimes comic, affirmation of what is here and what we all know is waiting."
-- Carolyn Osborn, award-winning short story writer

"The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan."
-- Will's Texana Monthly

O'Connell's protagonist skillfully navigates under the guise of a writer seeking raw materials for his craft in the stories of the dying, but mines and refines instead the stuff we're all made of. In this finely crafted novel, we come away with much more than the astute observation that many of the best stories begin at the end. But, then again, that notion is also worth a lot.
--Jesse Sublett, cancer survivor, rocker and author of Never the Same Again

"Joe O'Connell's Evacuation Plan--this Decameron of the hospice--encompasses a paradox. Death comes for everyone, but death is the only human universal because everyone dies, and witnesses dying, with private, unspeakable shame. Yet there are a few minutes left to speak. As people die, they tell stories which spawn new stories, which remind us that death is agony, a violent struggle, but so is living."
-- Debra Monroe, Flannery O'Connor Award winning author of Newfangled and Shambles

Joe M. O'Connell

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Fourth 'Transformers' film to shoot in Texas in June

About Me

What they're saying about EVACUATION PLAN

stat counter

Blog Archive

Followers