FXBG Goes Hollywood
HollyBurg
FXBG Music Scene
Area’s past recognized by oscars
Tyler Lubore
FXBG Antique Dealer supplies props By Susan Larson
Barbara Watkins’ passion is antiques. Never did she imagine she’d contribute to a major motion picture. An ordinary Saturday working at the Fredericksburg Antique Mall became a day Barbara Watkins and Charlene Trueman will never forget. “We were very busy and weren’t paying much attention to these two men until they began piling vast amounts of antiques up on the counter,” Watkins said. “We were running out of room on the counter and we were thinking — what in the world is going on? This isn’t our usual, typical customer!” Watkins (Barbara Watkins Antiques) and Trueman (Charlene Trueman Antiques) each have a space in the Fredericksburg Antique Mall. “Finally we said to them, ‘You look like you have a game plan here; there’s something you’re working on,’” Watkins said. “And for some reason it popped into my head — a movie, a stage production, they’re looking for props. And one of the men said, ‘Yes, we are. As a matter of fact, Steven Spielberg is working on a movie.” That man was set decorator Jim Erickson and the movie was “Lincoln”. “‘We’re finding lots of things in your shop, but we’re really just getting started here in Virginia,’ he told us,” Watkins said. “When they were finished and checked out to the tune of — I don’t know what, but most of the dealers in the shop were pleased, especially me, I asked the gentlemen what else they were specifically looking for,” Watkins said. Watkins, who specializes in 18th and 19th century antiques, had items at her home that interested the set decorator, and he made an appointment to visit a week later. “He came to my home with his assistant and started purchasing things off the walls, off the floor, or asking me if they were for sale,” Watkins said. “And since I’m of a certain age where I need to be downsizing, most things were for sale,” she laughed. Erickson kept in touch with Watkins for a while, and she recommend
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other places for him to find props. “He was very well informed,” Watkins said. “He had in his head what he needed and wanted. I never saw him pull out a list and cross things off,” she said. “He was entirely doing this from his own knowledge. He’d been a collector of antiques for many years, so he knew what was right and what wasn’t. And he had instructions from DreamWorks concerning each scene,” she said. When the movie was released, Watkins was surprised how difficult it was to identify “her” items in the film. “They bought all this from me and from our shop and it’s going to just pop out at me I thought,” Watkins said. “It was a harder search to find things that I remembered because they had so much in the film.” “I saw a set of chairs I sold him and I believe he used one print of George Washington I sold him,” Watkins said. She said attorneys for the film called to confirm the print was an authentic antique. “The chairs were in many scenes where the men were sitting around the tables having their meetings,” she said. Watkins plans to watch the movie again on DVD so that she can stop and start and look more closely at the scene decor. “There are lots of things [in the movie] that you just wouldn’t notice or could tell were yours — quilts, baskets, jugs — primitive things that were in the scenes of the more modest properties.” Watkins, who works as an assistant reference librarian at Central Rappahannock Regional Library, wondered if she might have a chance to repurchase anything when the filming was completed. Erickson told her no; everything would be shipped to massive warehouses in Hollywood. “Little shops and little towns don’t frequently touch fame,” said Watkins, who also sells from a showcase in in New Oxford Antiques Center Pennsylvania. “It was very exciting and we all had a lot of fun.”
Watch the Video (4 mins): Steven Spielberg Talks about Lincoln in Virginia. www.virginia.org/Lincoln/
Susan Larson is the publisher of Fredericksburg.Today. This story was first published on Fredericksburg[dot]Today. Photo by Susan Larson
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by Ashleigh Chevalier
By gary olsen The Fredericksburg area’s direct connection to my 17 lectures on The Academy Awards and The Nominations is indisputable. Throughout the year my research has revealed that the area is more responsible for the talent, craftsmanship and topics that are the basis of celluloid’s top annual prize than, with the exception of Southern California, any other region in the country. Three films that I had discussed in my last presentation showed that Fredericksburg was directly linked to what had been the most influential films in the past three years. 2013’s Best Picture, 12 Years A Slave, was based on New York black freeman Solomon Northup, who was offered a short gig in Washington, D.C. Trouble was slavery was still legal in Washington and hosted one of the largest slave markets in the country. Drugged and sold by the two who lured him to D.C., Northup was sold to a slave trader, who, in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol, sold the freeman for, in today’s dollars, $27,000. Shipped to Louisiana, his 12-year ordeal eventually became an autobiography which film director Steve McQueen read and became obsessed about. His efforts resulted in the most talked about film of that year. Fredericksburg movie goers recognized several area locations when viewing Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, nominated for Best Picture in 2012. The movie, concentrating on the last months of Lincoln’s life and his efforts to have Congress pass the 13th Amendment banning slavery, was filmed in nearby Richmond and Petersburg. Spielberg insisted upon historical accuracy for the film and he couldn’t be any happier with his scouting team. Filming for 55 days in Virginia, Spielberg used the Virginia State Capitol for the U.S. Capitol and the White House. What has to be the biggest irony of any location ever used in film history, the scenes of Congress’s debates on the Amendment were shot in the state capitol’s House of Delegates, the same building that housed the Confederate States’ Congress during the Civil War. And props for the movie were supplied by FXBG antique dealers! Spielberg’s film crews bounced around Richmond’s Executive Mansion, the Virginia Repertory Center, Maymont as well as several locals in Petersburg, Mechanicsville, Goochland and State Farm in Powhatan for the battlefield scenes. Fast forward 115 years to the Iran Hostage Crises, the period 2012’s Best Picture, Argo, focuses in on. Ben Affleck
plays a CIA agent who poses as a Canadian film producer to extract six American hostages from Iran in 1980. The real CIA agent, Tony Mendez, has local ties to the area in that he worked in Virginia for the Company. In addition, he is a founding board member for D.C.’s International Spy Museum, where you can see items he used on the so-called “Canadian Caper.” For Argo’s preparation, Mendez met with Affleck in Washington, taking him to sites where espionage events occurred and relating to him the inner life of a CIA operative. After a recent film lecture, I was approached by a member of the audience who noted that Sandra Bullock, nominated for Best Actress for 2013’s Gravity and who spent her high school years in Arlington, has direct ties to Fredericksburg. Sandra’s mother, Helga Mathilde Meyer, a popular opera singer, was a voice teacher who drove down to, at the time, Mary Washington College for many years to teach enthusiastic students the fine art of singing. Now that these 17 lectures are over, I am preparing a monumental series on the top 14 film auteurs, or directors in motion picture history. The first will be on Charlie Chaplin on April 2 at the Central Rappahannock Regional Library on 1201 Caroline Street. John Ford, Orson Wells and Alfred Hitchcock will follow.
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There is a lot of discussion in the world about talent, aptitude, “luck”, attitude, and due diligence. Combine that with the intangible wills of fate, the pop culture connotation of karma, and the general obstacles our jungles might create, and it truly is a wonder anyone in the darned world would pursue a career in art or music. Then there are the hearts, quietly, yet steadily, beating true to the rhythm of their own souls. The hearts are listening for the next beat with which to pulse, the pulse of the dream and the destiny. Tyler Lubore is one of these hearts. He is a focused, dedicated, talented, and capable young man – a Renaissance man in the making, evenworking tirelessly in his art to carve his place. He earned a Bachelor’s in music, with a minor in English, at the University of Virginia (in three years), and is currently in finishing his second semester of the University of Mary Washington’s MBA program. Lubore began playing the saxophone and taking lessons with Forte Music Studio owner, Young Devereaux, and continued to study with Jeff Decker privately at UVA and perform under D’earth in the UVA Jazz Ensemble. Lubore is currently performing with the UMW jazz ensemble under Doug Gately. He is in purposeful pursuit of being a career musician, experimenting with popular genres and various instrumentalists to develop a unique, accessible sound with his current group, The Lubore Band. This includes collegiate pals Jeremy Hook on guitar, Devin Sullivan on keys, and Alex Rodriguez on bass. The quartet performs everything from the current Sam Smith’s Stay to their original instrumental jazz rock compositions. It is fresh fusion in the makin’, if they aren’t careful.
“I want to develop my own musical voice and take all of these disparate influences that I have to tell a story that people can connect with and dig in a real way, and to help them dance in the process.” Yep. Not to mention the guy is incredibly well read and knowledgeable, and has one of the most positive attitudes around. The Lubore Band is one to watch and witness. The Lubore Band, Catch Wednesday, January 7, 2015 at The Fredericksburg Art Collective Showcase. Visit Tyler Lubore Music on Facebook for more dates! (When you see him perform, give him a high five. He deserves it. ) Ashleigh Chevalier is a Blues/Jazz/Rock Musican-Vocalist, Songwriter, Music & Media Journalist and, a mother living in Fredericksburg
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