Stephen King movie will be filmed in Greenfield by Indiana filmmakers

Update, January 2020: 5 After 5 Productions had a small screening at Shocktober, a one-night horror movie festival, in 2018 in Irvington. The short story the movie is based on, "The Man Who Loved Flowers," is part of author Stephen King's Dollar Baby program. That means the filmmakers can't make a profit from it.

Filmmaker Cameron Grimm said they'd like to make another movie based off King's work in the future.

Grimm is currently working on "I Only Want You," a drama starring Morgan Pyle, who played the 8-year-old daughter of Ted Bundy's girlfriend in "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile." Also in the cast are WISH-TV's Patty Spitler and Don Stuck from Q95 94.7 FM.

Original story:

GREENFIELD – When Cameron Grimm decided to make a Stephen King movie, he consulted with the experts — that is, Facebook fans of the author who has long reigned as the master of horror.

They had two pieces of advice for the Sulphur Springs-based filmmaker, who's embarking on his first short feature film venture with King's "The Man Who Loved Flowers."

"They say, one, this is our favorite short story that he's written out of hundreds," Grimm said. "And they each tell me not to screw it up. So a lot of pressure there."

Grimm crafted a seven-page script from the tale, and his company, 5 After 5 Productions is making the film in Greenfield. The release date isn't set yet, but filming will begin Sept. 8. The production team is still working out particulars and has ballparked the movie to be between 20 and 45 minutes long.

For this debut venture, King's story encompasses exactly what Grimm wants 5 After 5 to focus on.

"Our heartbeat to our company is original ideas, great writing, great stories and deep characters, tangible characters," he said.

King wrote "The Man Who Loved Flowers" in 1977 for the men's magazine "Gallery." It's now part of the 1978 book "Night Shift," a collection of stories by the author who is best known for his novels including "The Green Mile," "It" and "The Shining" — and the subsequent movies they inspired.

In the tale, readers follow a man so in love that he turns the heads of passers-by on his 1963 springtime walk to meet Norma for a date. He buys her roses along the way, and not even the terrible news coming out of Vietnam, the Russians' nuclear device or an at-large hammer killer can ruin his mood. Nothing changes until after the man meets Norma — or at least thinks he does.

He realizes his date isn't Norma, that Norma died a decade ago, that he still looks for her and that he has murdered multiple people. After killing once again, the man continues his walk with the look of love still emanating from his face. A middle-age woman sees him and yearns for the same look from her husband.

You'd think that using the work of such a powerful literary figure would cost a filmmaker a mint. But that's not the case for Grimm. He worked out a contract with King as part of the author's longstanding Dollar Baby film program, which allows qualifying filmmakers to pay $1 to use preapproved titles as the basis for their scripts and films.

Filmmakers can't make a profit and must adhere to a certain length, among other requirements. They can raise money to cover creation costs and enter the resulting films in festivals. Grimm said he has put in about $5,000 of his own money and is fundraising through an Indiegogo and T-shirt campaign.

King "helps us by getting his name to kind of get out there, gives us the material, the copyright and everything to do it," Grimm said. "And in return, he gets a movie made. Once we're done, we have to send a copy to him to watch. ... He gives you the creative right to be able to do what you want to do with it."

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"The Man Who Loved Flowers" is set in New York, but Grimm's production will take place in Greenfield. About 60 volunteers from Central Indiana and Terre Haute are part of the cast and crew.

Christian Condra (the young man), Gabrielle Bousom (Norma) and Chris Abel (flower vendor) are part of a cast of about 30. Crew members include Bobbee Darko as the cinematographer and Rick Connell, from the Indianapolis-based pop rock band Réaul, as the composer.

Greenfield will be the other star of the show. King's story puts enough importance on the places and people standing outside them that they become another character.

Having grown up in Greenfield, the town had the vibe Grimm was seeking for the main character's walk.

"Greenfield has this kind of charm," Grimm said. "It has an old-fashioned sense to it but yet it's ... a little bit of a modernized, busy kind of town."

Much of the film will be set on Main Street, which has a collection of quaint shops like J.W. Riley's Emporium Antiques, with its prosthetic leg and arm in the window. Along the street are Lincoln Square Pancake House and the Hancock County Courthouse, in front of which the statue of another famous writer — James Whitcomb Riley — stands.

Making a film like this is a long time coming for Grimm. It circles back to his past growing up in Greenfield and New Castle. Grimm planned on becoming a filmmaker after high school, but when his computer crashed, he lost a full-length screenplay he was talking to a film company about. Grimm tried rewriting it a few times, but when the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks occurred, he felt he should join the Navy. After he got out, he said he was accepted to the Los Angeles Film School but decided to get married and have kids.

Grimm continued, however, to learn about filmmaking. He studied behind-the-scenes stories about movies, researched in books and online, and took webinars. To hone his skills, he created promo videos for small businesses and put together videos for Rock the Park, a music festival in New Castle.

Almost two years ago, Grimm founded 5 After 5 Productions and has been working on projects when he's not at his day job at Reflectix Insulation in Markleville.

Grimm's projects bring him back to the part of his life when he lived a mile from a theater in New Castle.

"I just enjoyed sitting in the back of the movie and watching people enjoy the movie and enjoy what they saw in it, and that kind of made me realize that that's what I want to do," Grimm said.

"I want to make movies that make people laugh or make people cringe, you know, at times, or get excited and want to laugh and clap."

Call IndyStar reporter Domenica Bongiovanni at 317-444-7339. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.