news-record.com

It all started with Owen Smith's 12-year-old sister, Marianne.

She had an idea for her filmmaking brother about what to do for his next movie. It was her book. Well, the book she was reading.

"Hey, your next movie,'' she told him, holding up "Mandie and the Secret Tunnel.'' "You ought to do this book. It's about a kid, a big house, a tunnel ...''

"No, no, no,'' Smith told his sister. "Not a chance.''

Smith and his filmmaking partner, Joy Chapman, already had spent the past few years doing children's films. Being first-time filmmakers, they figured children would be more forgiving. Plus, they both had been raised on Disney flicks, and they wanted to make films that gave a new generation the feeling they had as kids when they watched a Disney flick with their family.

So, Chapman and Smith brought from book to screen five stories from "The Sugar Creek Gang'' series.

Afterward, Smith didn't know where to turn next. Then, he read "Mandie.''

He liked it. So did Chapman. Next, though, came the hard part. 

Smith found out the book's author, Lois Leppard, lived in Greenville, S.C.

So, in January 2006, he drove to South Carolina and met Leppard in her living room. She ordered sandwiches, they sat down at her table ,and Leppard told him story after story.

Leppard told Smith that Mandie was really patterned after her mother Mahalia and that she wrote 40 volumes of the "Mandie" series. But her first volume in the series was "Mandie and the Secret Tunnel,'' and she wrote it in a notebook when she was 11. At the time Smith talked to her, Leppard was 82.

She told Smith she tried to convince MGM Studios to make a movie of it back in the 1940s. The studio sent her a nice thank-you note and refused. Then, 40 years later, another producer tried to make it into a movie. That didn't work either.

This time, though, the third time was the charm.

Leppard signed a contract with Lost World Pictures, the film company Chapman and Smith ran, and gave Smith the green light to turn her book into a movie.

Smith went back at least two or three more times to sit with Leppard and better understand Mandie, the young girl in 1899 in search of her past. 

Why? Mandie, the book, was her baby.

During the entire process, Smith kept Leppard abreast of the project. He showed her pictures of the film and faxed her photos of the actors he cast as characters from her book.

Meanwhile, Leppard faxed him responses, queries and comments. She didn't do e-mail. She simply banged out a letter on her typewriter and send it along by fax, the eight-track tape of communications technology.

The whole time, Leppard was excited. Her sister told Smith that much. But she never got to see the final product.

Last fall, Leppard died. She was 84, and she was a week away from having Smith drive to Greenville, S.C., pick her up and take her to see the movie adaptation of the book she wrote 73 years ago.

Two years ago, Smith and Chapman filmed "Mandie and the Secret Tunnel''  in North Carolina. Matter of fact, they spent 13 days filming at Reidsville's Chinqua Penn Plantation.  On Sunday afternoon, they'll show the local premiere of "Mandie'' at The Carolina Theatre. More than a half-dozen of the actors -- as well as the filmmakers themselves -- will be there to answer questions.

You can imagine they'll ask about Leppard. And they'll probably ask about the story, too.

You see, Smith is 29; Chapman, 33. Smith hadn't read "Mandie and the Secret Tunnel'' until his sister recommended it. But Chapman had. And she found out by coincidence when she went back to her church in Georgia, Stone Mountain Community Church, a place she and Smith had attended as children.

She found the book in the library, and when she opened it, she saw her name. Chapman had checked out "Mandie and The Secret Tunnel'' when she was a kid.