LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
'The Great Debaters' movie set takes shape at Texas State Railroad near Palestine
BY TERRIE GONZALEZ

Gail Briant (left) and Cecile Aymami of New Orleans use hatchets to distress new wood on a train platform for a movie set. Academy Award winner Denzel Washington, who is directing and starring in "The Great Debaters," will begin shooting at the Texas State Railroad during early June. The movie is about an underdog debate team from Wiley College in Marshall that defeats Harvard University in the national championship. The movie will be released in 2008.

A crew of 13 from Local #478 in Louisiana trained their tools on a movie set at the Texas

State Railroad near Palestine last week.

When Denzel Washington, who directs and stars in "The Great Debaters," gets to town in early June the set will be ready, said Dean Allison, crew chief.

Saws hummed and hammers cracked through the pineywoods as the movie set took shape last Thursday.

Only the front of the depot and a few feet on either side will be in the camera's viewfinder, so the crew is not building out the interior, sides or back of the building.

And the cost? Mr. Allison has no idea what the budget is for this particular set. "We brought some of the lumber with us, and they set up a charge account for us at one of the local lumber stores," he said.

Carpenter l Andrew Casbom of New Orleans uses a jig saw to cut wood for the construction of a movie set at the Texas State Railroad. Filming will begin in early July for "The Great Debaters."

Cash registers will likely jingle more vigorously in Palestine than in Rusk as crew members book hotel/motel rooms, buy meals and fill up tanks of gas. No reservations have been made in Rusk at the Weston Inn yet, but local proprietors are hoping that if Palestine motels get booked to capacity during actual filming, some will overflow to Rusk.

Two members of Mr. Allison's team, Gail Briant and Cecile Aymami from New Orleans, wielded hatchets on Thursday to distress the new lumber used to construct the train platform.

"It just looks too new," said Ms. Briant. Once the construction is completed, she will pick up a different set of tools and tackle her specialty: painting.

When she is done, the front of the depot will look like a gently worn train station from the 1930s.

The movie screenplay calls for the debate team from Wiley College to board a train and travel to a national competition out-of-state, where they face Harvard University.

Of the 120 or so minutes in the runtime of the movie, only a few will be devoted to the movie set at the Texas State Railroad. However, setting the stage with historical accuracy was important to Mr. Washington, who scouted local sites and hand-picked the TSR.

Once the filming wraps, a spokesman from the railroad said that the movie set will be removed from the tracks.

"The Great Debaters" will also star Forest Whitaker, who won a 2007 Academy Award for "The Last King of Scotland." Mr. Whitaker is a native Texan, born in Longview.

Movie-goers will get a glimpse of East Texas when the movie is released by The Weinstein Company in 2008.