Writer and director William Craft wanted to turn a Southern Maryland negative into a positive and the result is the movie “Phoenix Reborn: A Love Story,” which opened in Michigan last weekend.
The 2-hour, 42 minute film tells the fictional story of William Cross, who is a highly-recruited baseball player in 1985. After suffering a terrible injury, he must fight his way back to the diamond with the help of a strong support network.
The 1986 Great Mills graduate, who also directed the film, said it is “my love letter to Southern Maryland.”
Craft began writing the movie following the 2018 Great Mills High School shooting, where a student shot and killed one student and injured another during the school day.
“Great Mills was being identified with the shooting so I wanted to create a positive story for Southern Maryland about how young people could fight their way back from adversity,” he said. “It was an inspiration because I wanted a positive portrayal of Southern Maryland because my experiences [there] were so positive. It’s a very supportive community, a very close and tight-knit community, and I wanted to show a lot of that.”
The movie, which is set in the 1980s, was shot in Michigan and featured local actors, but Craft shot some footage in Southern Maryland and the film has St. Mary’s County references sprinkled throughout.
Craft is a systems administrator at the Western Michigan University’s Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine in Kalamazoo.
There is footage of a Great Mills vs. Thomas Stone football game, Great Mills High School is rebranded as Grand Bay High School, the female lead attends St. Mary’s Ryken, Maryland stuffed ham is served at a dinner, the Moll Dyer Rock makes an appearance and a character named Tubby Clarke is in honor of longtime NCAA basketball coach and St. Mary’s native Tubby Smith.
“I cooked it myself because no one had any idea what it was,” Craft said of the stuffed ham, which he added the cast liked.
The film stars Jayden Van Stee as William Cross and Eliy Simmer as Katherine O’Shaughenessy.
Cross asks his costar out on a date and he suggests they go to Nicoletti’s and then Ski Beach, referring to the Town Creek area that at the time was popular with boaters and water skiers.
The film is rated PG-13, but has subject matter and language that may be offensive to some viewers.
When Cross is named as the Maryland state baseball player of the year, he’s handed a Baltimore Orioles cap. But he removes the cap for one bearing the logo of the Cincinnati Reds while saying, “I’d rather play for a more prestigious organization.”
Craft said he showed the script, which took about two months to write, to a contact in Hollywood but they wanted to change it from baseball to soccer as well as alter the identities of the characters.
“It was so important for me to have characters come from where I came from,” said Craft, who has written and directed several movies and short stories, including “All My Heroes Have Been Watermen and Infielders.”
The film, which cost between $50,000 and $65,000 and was completed in September 2023, has been entered in about a dozen film festivals, including the Southern Maryland Film Festival planned for mid-August. Craft said he’s hoping to organize a local screening sometime later this year.
Information about “Phoenix Reborn: A Love Story” is listed on www.imdb.com and a trailer is available to view on YouTube.
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