Hazell makes feature film

      Three years working in LA on acting and film writing skills and one soggy afternoon on the Mississippi have turned a Washington native into a co-writer and actor in a feature-length film.

      Jon Hazell, a 1986 graduate of Washington High School, wrapped up filming of Beneath the Mississippi two weeks ago in Burlington. The feature-length film is a psychological thriller, according to one movie producer, and could see theatrical release in Iowa.

      Hazell, who plays a Mississippi River guide in the film and who helped write the screenplay with ex-LA actor, writer and director Lonnie Schuyler, had spent three years in Los Angeles working on his acting and writing skills before returning to Iowa in 2002. In Burlington, he met up with other former Californians, including Schuyler, who had put in a one-year stint on the TV show Melrose Place.

      The two men got together, discovered they had a lot in common, and went on a boat ride on the Big Muddy. They took the boat out to the river's islands, including one that had hosted a town in the 1930s that specialized in distilling and prostitution during prohibition. Eventually, the boat got stuck on the bottom, and Hazell dove into the water to free the hull. When he came up, he was wet and covered in mud. Inspiration struck. Following that trip, the film was born.

      Schuyler and Hazell spent three months banging out the screenplay, then made casting calls in LA, where they whittled applicants from a pool of 2000 actors. The film's first shot was taken this January.

      Tim Anderson, executive producer of Beneath the Mississippi, describes the film as a psychological thriller about four documentary filmmakers who attempt to investigate disappearances on the river, but, alas, "bad things start to happen" to the characters along the way.

      Anderson said after editing is completed and the film is ready for viewing, it will be taken to film festivals before the crew's production company attempts to secure theatrical releases that could bring the film to theaters in Iowa.

      "The film footage is good enough to push for a theatrical deal," said Anderson.

      Part of the reason the film might look so realistic is that it was filmed during a genuine series of Iowa thunderstorms.