INTERVIEW
DEADLY SANCTUARY
Arizona Prominently Featured in Exciting New Film by Lynette Carrington
Recently “Arizona Filmmaker Magazine” was invited to the set of exciting new film “Deadly Sanctuary.” The film is based on the popular mystery book by valley author, Sylvia Nobel. The movie recounts historical events from the ‘70s. The story takes many mysterious twists and turns. In “Deadly Sanctuary” the events were uncovered by the heroine and investigative reporter from the book, Kendall O’Dell. “Deadly Sanctuary” stars Eric Roberts, Dean Cain, Daniel Baldwin, Marco Dapper, Rebekah Kochan and a host of local actors. It filmed at various locales around Arizona and we caught up with the production when they were filming out at Bumble Bee Ranch in Bumble Bee, Arizona.
so it’s been really good. Between here and Colossal Studios and Black Canyon City and Wranglers’ Roost… it’s made it phenomenal,” Criss shares. Fiery-haired author and Phoenix resident Sylvia Nobel served not only as writer, but as producer on “Deadly Sanctuary.” Joined by her husband Jerry Williams (who also served as executive producer), the dynamic duo were embraced by everyone on-set. Having the author of the source material for the film during production was an asset.
Filming in Arizona has been a fantastic experience. “It’s been great, other than it’s been a little windy… It’s provided so many different locations for the film, 30 AZ FILMMAKER
“All of the Kendall O’Dell mystery stories (and I’m almost finished with story number five now), are based on actual stories that I’ve gotten from the newspaper or television and I weave them into each story so they all have a basis in fact. I take the character to different parts of the state and I want to showcase this beautiful state so that not only everyone in the United States can see how gorgeous it is, but everyone in the world,” Nobel says. As with many people in the filmmaking community, the first time on a movie set is often an unforgettable experience. “I’ll never look at a movie the same way having seen what it takes to make one,” Williams adds.
Director Nancy Criss took a break in filming to tell us a bit about the production. “Sylvia Nobel that wrote the novel came to visit me when we were filming ‘A Horse for Summer.’ I hadn’t met her before but she was friends with one of our actors. She asked if she could come and hang out on set. She loved the way I ran the set and how professional the crew all was,” states Criss. “Afterwards, she called me and she sent me her book ‘Deadly Sanctuary’ to read. I read it and said, ‘Yeah, this would make a great movie.” Meetings followed and seven months later, the film was in production. “Her book and this film is based off of true events that happened in Arizona. There were several of these books and she just intertwined them all and made this story wrap around all the true events. That’s why it was really important to film this in Arizona, too,” Criss notes.
diligently working with the Arizona Legislature to hopefully get film tax incentives reinstated. “What’ I’d like to do is get a lot of films into this state,” Nobel explains.
“This is our first production,” states Williams. “She wrote the book 15 years ago and it’s in its sixth printing,” he says of the ‘Deadly Sanctuary’ novel. “Technology keeps changing, so (Sylvia) has to keep updating the book.” “I think it’s going to be very important for bringing back the film industry to Arizona, which has been gone for quite a few years, since the tax incentives sunsetted,” states Nobel of “Deadly Sanctuary.” Nobel and Williams are
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2015
Another instrumental person on “Deadly Sanctuary” is producer Harvey Lowry, who is known for his work on “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Watchman” and many other wonderful films. “I’ve known Nancy for many years. This film came about pretty quickly for her and she asked me to come aboard and produce the film for her so that she could focus on the creative and directing duties,” explains Lowry. He has also been helpful in pushing the importance of a tax incentive in Arizona and the day prior to our set visit, Lowry spoke with Carl Seel, member of the Arizona House of Representatives. “I met with Representative Seel and we had a great conversation about bringing a film incentive program to the State of Arizona. I kind of explained to him that Arizona right now is sort of viewed upon in Hollywood, as everywhere