Shades of Gray - Gray Barker Night
Bob Wilkinson, one of WV’s best new filmmakers, began the Gray Barker Night program at The South Charleston Museum on Saturday night by talking about his fascinating with a largely unknown WV author from Clarksburg, Gray Barker. He introduced his amazing seven minute trailer for his evolving film, “Shades of Gray” to a small but appreciative audience.
Wilkinson wasn’t surprised at the small audience. He said that “no one knows about Barker.” He has been doing research for several years, interviewing family members in Braxton County, talking to Robert Tinnell, a super fan of Barker up in Morgantown, and in general obsessing about a man who help found the entire flying saucer-Mothman - Braxton County Monster field in the early Fifties and Sixties. Wilkinson told me, “I went to high school for two years in South Charleston, watching movies at The La Belle Theater, but I never thought that I would see my name ever on the marquee.” Wilkinson arranged to use some music by Charleston native musical genius George Crumb and got John Lilly of Goldenseal to write some original music for his film. During dinner at The Main Tin, Wilkinson said, ” Lilly was just so great. I didn’t want to use the usual electronic type of music, focusing more on how Barker was a WV-rooted character.” I can’t wait to see his final film, hopefully sometime in the next few years.
He told me that he worked for WV Paving for seven years after high school, finally deciding to go to WVSU and after being an English major, moved over to communications. He owes “everything to Steve Gilliland” who got him excited about film during his film appreciation course. He went on a trip with Professor Daniel Boyd and other students to Latin America, seeing a different culture.
He completed his first film for WVPBS, “John Brown’s Body,” presenting the film in Shepherdstown at a reunion of people from Storer College, the main subject of the film. The film has been shown several times on WVPBS’ “Outlook” for which he works.
Bernice Basham, WV Film Fan #1, brought two of her friends from St. Mark’s Methodist Church, joining us for dinner with her friend Margaret Taylor. ( I worked for years with Mrs. Taylor’s wonderful daughter, Leigh, who is a well-known local graphic artist.)
Other attendees included a man who knew Barker when he went to Glenville State College, David Schau, a new SCM Foundation board member and well-known Kanawha County librarian in charge of the WV Collection, Mike Sublette, owner of Frog Creek Books and a few others. Apparently everyone was too worn out by the WVU-Marshall Coal Bowl to venture out in the heat. Neither local newspaper printed anything about the event, giving good coverage to a held at the WVSU Capitol Center in downtown Charleston where 200 people from around the state and US listened to presentations by world-famous UFO experts, etc.
Originally SCM planned on showing the world premiere of the DVD version of “Whispers.” Ralph Coon in LA was going to edit the film and put it on a DVD - which would have made a better film since it was a bit rambling. Also, the sound was bad, making it often difficult or impossible to understand Barker’s friends that gave their interesting interviews.
I was most disappointed that the local filmmakers didn’t come to support Bob Wilkinson who has been active in filmmaking in the Valley at least since 2002 when he graduated from WVSU. I suspect that the South Charleston Museum will have to curtail its WV film series in 2008 and beyond because of the local lack of support for its WV film series - something unique not only in WV but almost anywhere. It’s mindblowing that many of the hundreds of WVSU film students, the hundreds of intellectuals in the valley that support Taylor Books, the profs at the local colleges have never attended ANY film programs at The South Charleston Museum since it began its series in July 2004.
