Lisa Enos: Back in the movies

After taking a few years off from the film industry, Scottville native Lisa Enos is back in the movie business.

Earlier this summer Lisa was offered the position of Executive Producer of the film “Cavegirl the Movie.” For the past month she has been in London working on casting.

“It’s a movie for kids,” Lisa says. “There’s going to be music in it for kids, like teen pop rock featuring young artists like Cher Lloyds. The director is known for music videos so that will have a huge influence on how it’s done. There are dance numbers and songs in it though I wouldn’t call it a musical. It’s an action adventure movie with comedic elements.”

Lisa’s film career started when she wrote and produced for the A&E TV series “Investigative Reports” in the 1990s. She then went on to write, direct, produce and act in several movies including “Ivansxtc,” which won the Boston Independent Film Festival award and was nominated for four Independent Spirit awards in the United Kingdom.

She also has producer credits on “The Kreutzer Sonata” and “Mr. Nice.”  In addition, she played a role in the film “Boxing Day” which is in the prestigious Venice Film Festival.

Lisa moved back to Michigan, first to Grand Rapids then to Ludington, about six years ago so her children could grow up in the Midwest. She worked for the Ludington Daily News part-time as a photographer/writer and was one of many who lost their jobs when the newspaper was purchased by an out-of-town corporation.

She has also been a contributing writer to Mason County Press.

Lisa says she wasn’t necessarily looking for the producer job. “They contacted me out of the blue,” she says. “The film has been in development for a couple of years and tragically one of the film’s producers died of a brain aneurism. They needed someone to step in and fill his shoes.

“They knew me by reputation. I think it’s important that a movie with a strong female lead character has a female somewhere in the mix of producers. Imagine a bunch of old British men being in charge of casting teenage girls. They needed someone like me who knows the landscape in both LA and the UK as it’s based on a hit UK TV show of the same name.

“In this case I’ve stepped in to handle LA casting.”

Filming will take place in South Africa.

“Once I’m on the ground in South Africa I’ll have some hands on the production aspect as well.”

Lisa says she gets sent scripts regularly. “The truth is most of them don’t go anywhere because there isn’t a committed producer behind them. I’m doing this because it’s a kids movie and up to this point I really haven’t been able to show my own children my movies because they’re all rated R.”

Lisa says she actually dragged her feet before looking over the script.

“It sat on my desktop for a month and my 11-year-old daughter Sadie actually is the one who read it. She heard me talking about it with Andy Bell, the producer. ‘Mom are you talking about the script that was on your computer?’ she asked. I said yes. She said, ‘I read it and I think it’s good, or at least better than most of the stuff directed at kids,’

“So my daughter really made the executive decision. Based on her reaction I thought it must be good and it is, for that age group.”

If packing her two children up and moving to London and then South Africa for several months wasn’t enough, they decided to act in a movie in Vienna as well.

The movie is called “Paganini – The Devil’s Violinist,” and it’s directed by the children’s father, Bernard Rose.

“We were in a scene which involved the lead, David Garrett, who plays Paganini. David is actually a real professional violinist and an actor. In the scene we are in Paganini is late for his performance and he enters the auditorium through the crowd and comes and plays right in front of the kids and I. We may or may not end up in the scene.”

Story by Rob Alway, Editor-in-Chief