Matt Barr Brings Acting Experience to 12 Mighty Orphans Project...

From the perspective of translating characters from print into film, Matt Barr, an acclaimed actor, has delved into the realm of the main characters featured in Jim Dent's book Twelve Mighty Orphans. As one of the four partners of 12 Productions, he has studied the characters not only as they have been portrayed in print and captured in film interviews, but he has also met with them personally, filming and interviewing the characters as well as those related to them. He has spent a year trying to understand each of the main characters in terms of nuance, motivation, physical demeanor, speech, personality and experience.

Matt has had a lifelong passion for films and has been acting since elementary school. His first film role was in Levelland, which began filming in Austin the second semester of his senior year in high school and in which he played the lead role.

Currently Matt is playing a lead role in the CBS 13-episode mini-series Harper's Island airing Saturday nights at 9:00 pm ET. He plays the best man in the murder mystery drama about friends and family who literally begin to die on an island where they've come for a destination wedding. He will also have a lead role in the upcoming spin-off of Gossip Girl which will be shot in Los Angeles.

Matt and the three other partners of 12 Productions, Ryan Ross, Mike Barr and Russell Morton, each bring a unique set of skills, experience and goals to the partnership. They have just finished a round of meetings in L.A. with film industry executives interested in taking the 12 Mighty Orphans story to film. Matt and Ryan were raised in the Dallas metro area and now live in Los Angeles where they work in the film industry.

Related info on Matt:
Matt Barr OK! Harper's Island (pdf)
Informal interview on video about his role in the Harper's Island series.
Matt Barr cover story in Allen (TX) Magazine (pdf)

Reunions Maintain Family Ties for Masonic Home Children

Reunions are important to the children who lived at The Masonic Home and the 2009 reunion of the ex-student association will take place on The Masonic Home Campus in Fort Worth. Home kids still refer to themselves as "family" and stay together with annual reunions, newsletters.

Last year the annual reunion was held in Galveston, Texas, and author Jim Dent was a guest and announced that Mike Barr had obtained the movie rights and Barr was in the process of putting a team together.

"If anyone can make that movie a reality, Mike Barr is the man," Dent said to the group in Galveston.

The gathering on the campus featured in the photo above was not a regular reunion. 12 Productions team members Mike Barr, Matt Barr and Ryan Ross (Matt and Ryan are at the far right in the above photo) worked on production aspects of developing the 12 Mighty Orphans story when they brought Home Kids back to the Masonic Home in mid-2008. They brought in two experienced film guys including Michael Piccola to photograph and video the day (see earlier blog post, Home Kids Return) as they worked to collect material and background needed to take the story from book to movie.

Characters in the story, posed in front of The Masonic Home & School sign at the entry of the campus, are, left to right: Miller Moseley, his sister Dorothy "Dot" Moseley, Doug Lord and his wife (who was also a Home Kid) Opal Lord, C.D. Sealey and Norman Strange.

The Masonic Home closed in 2005 and by 2007 the buildings were boarded up and abandoned, but it still remains a central place to those who experienced life there. All Church Home is the new owner of the core Masonic Home property. Mike Barr and Russ Morton, grandson of H.N. "Rusty" Russell and a partner in 12 productions, met with the All Church Home officials this month.

Paul Underwood, President of Ex-Masonic Home Student Association said in the most recent Ex-Student Association newsletter that the students "still mourn the loss of our Home" but most were pleased to see the core campus is being renovated and will be used for helping needy kids.

The ex-student association is holding the 2009 business meeting in the Dining Hall and the students will tour the campus that Sat. a.m. before the meeting.

Home Kids Return...

As part of the production development for the 12 Mighty Orphans story, principals of 12 Productions invited Home Kids, including characters in the book, Twelve Mighty Orphans, back to the site of The Masonic Home in Fort Worth, Texas. Together they toured the property and remembered what had happened decades ago, from the 1920s through the 1940s. The Masonic Home had closed just as Jim Dent was researching and writing his book.

Using golf carts to tour the now-vacant buildings, 12 Production principals Matt Barr and Mike Barr and Ryan Ross were there with the Home Kids as they toured the buildings and the campus and, in the process, were emotionally overcome by the meaning and significance of the people and events that came together long ago in that one place. This has been just one part of the work the 12 Productions team has been doing since the book was published, adding almost 20 hours of audio and video interviews and months of development work on the story and characters.

In the photo above, taken by Photographer Michael Piccola, shows Home Kids ready to scoot around the campus in a golf cart. They are real life characters in the true story and, from left, in front: Doug Lord and Norman Strange. In the back seat, from left: C.D. Sealey and Miller Moseley.

"Miller Moseley shed tears as he looked at the hole in the ground where his dorm used to be," said Mike Barr, remembering the activities of that day. Mike, a former football coach at Southern Methodist University, has worked to develop the arc of the story in terms of the coach and character of physics and math teacher H.N. "Rusty" Russell, and the football players which included Moseley, Lord, Strange and Sealey.

Actor Matt Barr, Mike's son, has a life-long passionate love of film and acting and a slew of acting credits (he is currently has the lead role in the CBS mini-series Harper's Island that will air its third episode this week on Thursday, 10:00 PM Eastern Time). Matt was also a football player in high school. He was most interested in character development and was awed by the experience of watching these men, who were captured in the book, move through the Masonic Home which was foundational to their lives.

"It was just awesome to watch them move, hear them speak, see them relate to one another -- these are things that are very significant when you create a character on screen. It is not the same as creating characters in words on a printed page," Matt says. Matt's father agrees.

"To actually take these men in their elder years back to the actual football field where they practiced in the prime formative years of their youth and hear their stories and to be able, right there, to ask them specific questions was a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Mike said, adding that what might have motivated them as players then takes on much greater significance when they have a lifetime of non-football experiences that were formed then, on that very grass. They studied and noted the characters' thoughts on teammates, coaches, strategies and all of these things have been important in concepts of story themes, character and story arc, Mike said.

Especially, with his own son and their own father/son, coach/player experience in mind, to work with the players on turf they all could relate to was significant to the 12 Mighty Orphans story for Matt and Mike. Principal Ryan Ross, who brings his production experience to the 12 Productions team, knew what would be important for moving the story to film from a production standpoint and he captured the experience that day on film.

That day, walking the ground, watching the Home Kids remembering the past, talking about the story and the place, was one to never forget.

Brothers and Sisters...

When Miller Moseley, Doug Lord, C.D. Sealy and Norman Strange sat on the stage at the downtown public library in Fort Worth as part of the promotion for the book Twelve Mighty Orphans when it was first published, they still acted like brothers. They referred to each other by nicknames, they had jokes that only they understood and whatever pecking orders had been set, those many many years ago, well... they still mattered, all these years hence and the bonds remain strong. After all, Home Kids always referred to themselves as family.

The audience that day had very few people there. After all, the story (now in the process of moving from book to movie) had been forgotten by most everyone but The Home Kids. Even in the telling of the story to Jim Dent, and those first days of publicity events, the orphans themselves were surprised that everyone else didn't realize how very, very special their experience had been. The Home Kids did, though.

That day, as she signed books, Opal Lord (a Home Kid and one of the characters in the book who married Home Kid Doug Lord) sat at the table signing her autograph to her picture in the book, and she related how she was stunned -- absolutely stunned -- that a person in the audience of the book store the night prior had asked her, with such sadness, how she had overcome her experience of living in an orphanage.

"Why this was heaven," Opal said afterwards. "I'd never seen a toothbrush before I got to The Home. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me," she said. How could people think this wasn't a good thing, she wondered aloud the next day, surprised at the reaction and ideas people seemed to have about the experience of growing up without a nuclear family and in an institution instead.

What these children had lived through, what they had become in the process, and what they still were these year later (which that day at the library were four old men up on the platform who had been equipped, somehow, to live lives that mattered and to know the significance of success) was a story that made them who they were -- in spite of --well, anything and everything.

The magic of that time and those characters involved continues to evolve and gain momentum as others, even the orphans themselves, recognize what a significant experience and story it really was. But only slowly. As with most things in life, only in retrospect and with the experience of years can one see the past in light of the present. This is why the story continues to sell in book form, why has gone through so many printings, and why it continues to unfold, capture hearts and inspire readers.

Dorothy "Dot" Moseley sat in the audience in the library auditorium in downtown Fort Worth watching her brother, and afterwards she, too, was part of the table of main characters who autographed their photos in the book about the true story of the Mighty Orphans. Dot is the little girl in the photo, above at right, with her mother, Mildred Lucille Miller, and her two brothers, Miller, at left, and Cecil, right. Dot recalls that most of the children at The Masonic Home had only lost their fathers. Dot's mother couldn't afford to keep the children and for the rest of her life felt guilty about having to put her kids in The Home.

"It was the best thing that could have happened to us," Dot said when she was interviewed about the story for a television special after the book was published.

The big event for the book publication promotion was an evening function at the Masonic building in downtown Fort Worth held the next day. Masons, Fort Worth citizens, Home Kids and their relatives packed the main hall. The Masonic Drum and Bugle Corps played, people filed in, reporters from all the local media outlets were there, and well known ESPN sports announcer Randy Galloway was host for the evening.

That night the story began to come alive once again in the in the eyes of these men, these boys from that era, as once again the bands played and the people cheered for them as they retold stories of the past.

Dot has recounted how the bonds of family were so close that nicknames endured for life (almost everyone, it seemed, had a nickname) and she could name them all, starting with A. C.D. Sealey, who came to The Home as a six year-old, was known as "Wheatie" because he once ate six bowls of Wheaties in a contest.

In fact, when Sealey was sitting on the stage that day, all these years later with his three other football teammates as part of the Twelve Mighty Orphans book promotion, he was still called Wheatie. It was no surprise because the children and staff at The Home became close. They reconfigured the idea of relations and created their own larger family, always calling themselves brothers and sisters. Forever.