‘Lex Luthor’ returns to Indiana for new film

EVANSVILLE, Ind. — Don’t get him wrong — Michael Rosenbaum is grateful for his seven years playing the villain Lex Luthor on WB’s “Smallville,” and for his scores of other acting roles in television, movies and plays over the last 15 years.

“But being an actor is really kind of like being a pawn,” Rosenbaum said.

At some point, the former Newburgh resident decided he wanted something more.

“I thought ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to write your own stuff, the say your own lines, get your own stuff produced, and hire your own friend?”’

At 39, Rosenbaum is doing all that, back where it all began, with “Old Days,” a feature film he wrote, will act in and will direct in Newburgh and Evansville over the coming month.

After several weeks of preparation, the movie’s 22-day shoot is set to begin Sunday, Rosenbaum said.

He will play the lead role in this story about an actor who returns from Los Angeles to his small, Midwestern town for a 15-year high school reunion. There, after spending time with old friends and an old high school flame, played by television and film actress Morena Baccarin, “he slowly starts to fall in love with this town he ran away from so many years before,” says Rosenbaum.

The project brings Rosenbaum back to where he fell in love with acting and found his calling. The New York native moved to Newburgh when he was 8 or 9, he said, and then took theater classes all through his years at Castle High School.

He didn’t audition for a school play, however, until he was a senior, and then only under pressure from his drama teacher. When he got the role of Vince Fontaine, “the crazy deejay,” he was terrified. After the director coaxed him out from hiding behind the props, “I finally got the nerve to be seen on stage,” he said.

Rosenbaum remembers hearing laughs from the audience after his lines, but the real payoff came the next day, as he walked down a hallway at Castle High School.

“One of the popular kids said, `Hey, you were really funny in that play,”’ he said. “I can’t tell you how that changed my life.”

Up until that point, he didn’t think anyone noticed him. For one thing, at 16, “I was the shortest kid in my high school,” he said. “I lied on my driver’s license and said I was 5’1” and 100 pounds, but I was really 4 feet 11 inches” and weighed 97 pounds.” An 18-month growth spurt brought 30 pounds and elevated him to “6 feet on the dot,” he said, but he had never felt as accepted at his high school as he did at that moment in the hall.

“I wasn’t accepted as me, but I was accepted as a character I was playing,” he said. “I thought, this is the first thing in my life that I think is working. I’m going to do more.”

Rosenbaum took to the stage in play after play at Western Kentucky University, where he graduated with a degree in theater and communications in 1994. He moved immediately to New York, working as a telemarketer, sharing a one-bedroom apartment with three others, performing in off-off-Broadway plays and auditioning for stage, TV and film work.

Rosenbaum’s screen career launched with a role in director Clint Eastwood’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” released in 1997, and a role on Tom Arnold’s “The Tom Show” that same year.

Since then, Rosenbaum has racked up scores of credits. His films include “Urban Legend,” “Sweet November,” “Poolhall Junkies,” “Kicking It Old Skool” and “Bringing Down the House.” In addition to his seven seasons on “Smallville,” he’s played in and done voices for more than a dozen TV series, with recurring roles in “Breaking In,” “Justice League,” “Jackie Chan Adventures,” “The Tom Show,” “Zoe” and others.

He began writing scripts six or seven years ago, after actress Carrie Fisher encouraged him to turn his stories into a series.

Rosenbaum wrote several scripts that producers liked, all the way through development, only to wind up unproduced. “You sell the script, you make a little money, and your idea gets stuck on a shelf somewhere and collects dust,” he said. “This is no fun.”

He decided to make “Old Days” after another feature project collapsed because some backers dropped out at the last minute.

“That’s when I finally said “I’m doing it myself. I’m not going to rely on a studio or a network to make my dreams come true.”

“Old Days,” is a rewrite of “Paradise, Ind.,” an earlier script inspired by his own memories of growing up in southwestern Indiana, he said. He did find a producer and outside financing, but his own Rose & Bomb Productions, a company his younger brother, Eric, works with him in, is part of the team.

By shooting the movie in southwestern Indiana, shooting high-quality digital tape that can be later transferred to film, Rosenbaum expects to spend less than $1 million for a feature film that would cost $25 million to $35 million to make in Los Angeles, he said. Baccarin and the other Los Angeles actors he’s hired for the movie are all working for minimum scale, and he’ll use lots of local actors and extras.

Newburgh’s Castle High School and Knob Hill restaurant have invited him to film there, as has Evansville’s Washington Square Mall and several friends, who’ve volunteered their homes and even a pet pig for the filming.

The city of Evansville has fast-tracked licenses and discounted some fees, and the Vanderburgh County Sheriff’s Office is working with the company to secure roads and locations. And Evansville Mayor Lloyd Winnecke has agreed to help find a helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft for aerial shots of Evansville and Newburgh along the Ohio River.

With help like that, “the production values are going to be enormous, for the budget,” he said

Rosenbaum doesn’t know when the movie will be finished. It typically takes a year between filming and release, he noted, “and this is my first feature film.” He expects to have to shoot retakes and use some “editing magic” to get the movie where he wants it.

He knows what will happen when “Old Days” is complete, however. “We’re coming back, and we’re going to premiere here,” he said. “I’m coming back to show the movie.”

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Information from: Evansville Courier & Press, http://www.courierpress.com