Kent State graduate Brandon Lazenok’s short film “October Roses,” inspired by Stephen King’s short story “Nona,” premiered on campus in the Kiva Auditorium Oct. 13.
“October Roses” follows Adam, a college professor who, from his jail cell, recounts the night he returned to his hometown and met a woman named Nona at a bar. He became enamored with Nona, and from there, Adam and Nona go on a hitchhiking journey. Eventually, Adam must confront his dark past, which involves the death of someone close to him.
“Nona” follows a similar plot aside from Adam having no name in the story.
Lazenok, director and co-producer, said Shelby Wyant-Lazenok, co-writer and co-producer, gave him the idea of adopting one of Stephen King’s works as a part of the “Dollar Baby” program, a collection of 23 Stephen King short stories not under contract for film work. This means individuals can license them for $1.
Wyant-Lazenok said she had seen the “Dollar Baby” program on an “Ask Me Anything” Reddit page for Stephen King, and she jokingly texted Lazenok about taking part in the program.
“I texted [Lazenok], ‘Hey, we should totally do this,’ and he texted me back, ‘Yeah, we should,’ and I was like ‘What?’” Wyant-Lazenok said.
After Lazenok, Wyant-Lazenok and Michael Doerge, co-writer, decided to create a film inspired by “Nona,” they had to decide what aspects of the story to change.
The title character of Stephen King’s work lacked a character background, and this caused Wyant-Lazenok and Doerge to write Nona a background story, Wyant-Lazenok said.
“Doerge and I actually added in the entire bowling alley scene and trailer park scene, those were all separate from Stephen King’s writings and we wrote those ourselves,” Wyant-Lazenok said. “To give her a background [for] the reason why she came back.”
Another change made to “October Roses” was incorporating plant imagery like roses instead of Stephen King’s initial use of rat imagery, Doerge said.
“I think one of the biggest changes on a thematic level was, [Lazenok] talked about the rat birth scene, there was a lot of rat imagery in the story,” Doerge said. “We decided for a lot of reasons, mostly budget I think, that it would have been difficult to pull off.”
With the story changes, Lazenok said he and everyone else involved made sure the changed elements emphasized the guilt felt by Matthew Weitz’s character, Adam.
“We definitely took a lot of creative liberties to the story, but we stuck with the core value of what King provided us,” Lazenok said.
Lazenok said he decided to ask Robert Kurtzman and Marcy King, co-executive producers and makeup special effects department heads, to join the project since Stephen King’s name was attached to it.
He decided to call Kurtzman, who is from Crestline, Ohio, as he attended high school with Wyant-Lazenok’s uncle, Lazenok said.
“I wanted to make this an Ohio film and I decided, ‘You know what, I’m just going to cold call [Kurtzman and Marcy King] and see what happens,’” Lazenok said.
When Lazenok made the call, he was expecting to speak to Kurtzman, but instead, Marcy King answered.
“About two o’clock in the afternoon the phone rang, and there was a person on the other end who you could tell was kind of flustered and rumbling very quickly,” Marcy King said. “Brandon [Lazenok] told me later that he was prepared to talk to Robert [Kurtzman], and he was prepared to leave a message.”
During the phone conversation, Lazenok asked Marcy King if he could borrow some prosthetics from Kurtzman and her. Marcy King said she responded with a “no,” but further asked what Lazenok intended to create for the film.
Marcy King said when she discovered Lazenok was a university graduate and was incorporating other former students, she asked to be sent the script.
When she received the script, Marcy King recognized a few of the names attached to the project.
“There’s a whole bunch of little small world stories to this entire production,” Marcy King said. “I get the script in an email, start printing it and I’m looking at the first page and there’s a Shelby and then there’s a Michael Doerge.”
Marcy King’s daughter was friends with Doerge’s older sister, and she said the last time she had seen Doerge was when he was about 9 years old.
“The last time I had saw Michael Doerge, he was 9 or 10 years old and he was running in my backyard,” Marcy King said. “That was the last time I had [seen] Michael so I was like ‘Oh my God, we have to do this.’”
During the filming of the short, Lazenok said he developed a bond with Kurtzman and the two are in talks with Marcy King and Wyant-Lazenok to create another film together.
Lazenok said he hopes viewers become more determined to create works of their own after viewing the film.
“If you have an idea, go for it,” Lazenok said. “Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do it – and when they do, do it anyways because that’s what happened to me. This movie should have failed 100 times, but we just kept it going, and I didn’t give up, and here we are today.”
Adriana Gasiewski is a staff reporter. Contact her at [email protected].
