his film HEAVENLY ANGLE
(courtesy photo)
MOVIE MAKER ERNEST THOMPSON
After decades in the movie business, hobnobbing with the stars and working as an actor, director, writer and producer (oh, and winning an Oscar for adapting his immortal stage play “On Golden Pond” for the screen), you’d think that Ernest Thompson might be slowing down, but he seems to, in fact, be starting over. His latest films, both made on almost non-existent budgets and filmed around his home in his beloved Lakes Region, are examples of what he calls community filmmaking. His first film from his Whitebridge Farm Productions, “Time and Charges,” offered on-location training to anyone interested in filmmaking. About 500 people showed up and the movie was made on weekends over the course of two years. That experience inspired his second work, “Heavenly Angle,” in which a filmmaker on the skids tries to con a small town à la “The Music Man” but winds up pulling the town together in unexpected (and often hilarious) ways. At the local premiere at Plymouth’s Flying Monkey movie house, most of the cast was there and Thompson declared a new age of cinema to have begun. Both films are now making the festival circuit to substantial acclaim.
To read this article in New Hampshire Magazine, click here.
