By KENNETH HART - The Independent
IRONTON — Dozens of folks showed up Saturday to honor the memory of an Ironton teenager by appearing as extras in a movie inspired in part by his courageous battle against a deadly disease.
Two Meters Films, an independent production company based in Washington D.C., was at Ironton High School to shoot the opening and closing scenes for the movie, which is entitled “The Shoebox.”
The opening depicts a T-shirt sale in the school gymnasium to raise money for the family of Shane Jones, who died of leukemia in October 2002 at the age of 13.
In real life, the event was held at Sta-Tan Pool in Ironton. The filmmakers had originally intended to shoot a scene recreating Shane’s funeral, which was in the IHS gym, but changed it out of respect for the boy’s parents, Shawn and Patty Jones.
Patty Jones said Saturday that she never requested that the scene be changed. However, she said she told them that while she would still support the project if they went ahead with the funeral scene, there was no way she or her husband would be able to attend the filming.
Patty Jones said that she was numb with grief when she attended her son’s actual funeral. Seeing it recreated with that numbness having faded with the passage of time would have simply been too painful, she said.
“The Shoebox,” which began shooting this past summer in Washington and in Nashville, tells the story of how Jones and another young cancer patient, 2-year-old Meghan Mack of Titusville, Fla., who died a few months after Jones, inspired three total strangers to write a song with the same title as the movie. The song was given to Mack’s family, and is played every year at Light the Night, a cancer fundraiser in Florida in Meghan’s honor.
One of the songwriters was Billy Bruce, a Lawrence County, Ohio, resident, who became close with Shane’s family as the boy was battling leukemia. The others were D.C. resident Bob “KJack” Gustafson and Alan Hamilton of Washington state. Gustafson also penned the screenplay for the film, which depicts how the Jones and Mack families became close friends and how a Web site known as Caringbridge brought them together and helped them deal with their heartbreak.
The other scene that was shot on Saturday depicted the Light the Night ceremony, and was shot in Tanks Memorial Stadium. It closes out the film.
Actor Andrew Mitakides, who plays Gustafson in the movie, said the message of the film is a powerful and inspiring one, and that that was what drew him to the project.
Traveling to Ironton and meeting some of the people depicted in the movie “gave it a whole new level of depth,” Mitakides said.
Carol Lee, Meghan’s mother, was able to spend some time with the actress who plays her in the film, Kimberly Spak. The two women actually bear a passing resemblance to one another.
Lee said she was excited about the film, and thought it was a fitting way to pay tribute to her daughter and to thousands of other youngsters who battle cancer.
“It seems like so often, they’re the forgotten ones,” she said.
Lee was accompanied at the shoot by her husband, Tommy Lee Jr., and Meghan’s brother, Tommy Lee III, aka “T3.”
Another of the film’s stars, Jessica Wanamaker, said the actors, writers and filmmakers had all worked hard to keep the story as true to life as possible. Having the actual people depicted in the movie on set during filming has helped in that regard, she said.
In the movie, Wanamaker plays a character whom she said isn’t particularly likable, one who essentially abandons her children to pursue her own ambitions. The character is a composite of several real-life individuals, she said.
“The Shoebox” is the first feature film for Two Meters Films. Producer and director Joe Zito said the movie is scheduled for a March 2011 release.
Zito said he is shopping the film to national distributors, and was confident he’d be able to find one. He also said he had secured a deal for the movie to be shown on cable TV in Ohio.
Some of the proceeds from the movie, and all the proceeds from the sale of T-shirts memorializing Shane Jones will go to support the IHS scholarship fund that’s in the name of Shane and his mentor and former football coach, the late Jeff Carty. The fund was started to assist IHS seniors who have overcome great difficulties.
KENNETH HART can be reached at khart@dailyindependent.com or (606) 326-2654.
