Press - Mind Games Premiere

14 June 1999: Locally made movie opens Tuesday at planetarium in The News-Gazette, Champaign, Illinois 

Locally made movie opens Tuesday at planetarium

June 14, 1999

The News Gazette
 Champaign, Illinois

By Kirby Pringle

CHAMPAIGN – First it was the stars, then it was rock stars, and now it is movie stars making their debut at Parkland College’s Staerkel Planetarium.

Ok, movie stars is stretching the term at this point. There are no big names in “Mind Games”, a locally made movie that premieres at 8 p.m. Tuesday at the planetarium. But that doesn’t stop its creators and actors from dreaming of bigger things down the road.

“I had been making little, amateur movies on my own for the last three years,” says Eleanore Stasheff, a communications-broadcast major at Parkland. “Then my brother, Edward, who’s a history and education major at Illinois State, wrote a script and we decided it would be fun to make a movie together.”

Filming – videotaping, actually – started on the sci-fi psychological thriller last summer and went on through October. After a break, taping resumed in March. The Stasheffs were in a last-minute rush to shoot a few more scenes and finish up the editing.

“The whole thing takes place on a spaceship,” Stasheff says. “But we had a problem finding a location that looked like a spaceship.”

That’s where the planetarium comes in. It’s an appropriate place for the premiere because the film was made there with the blessings of planetarium 
coordinator David Leake.

“It was the closest thing we could find to a spaceship,” Stasheff says.

The planetarium is proving to be a flexible space. Although its bread and butter is shows on stars, planets, and the heavens above, the planetarium has also been a successful venue for light shows set to the recorded music of Pink Floyd, the Beatles and other rock bands. Most recently, the local band Vertigo performed live – another first – at the planetarium.
 Four local actors, Annamarie MacLeod, Rachel Anderson, Chris Lamb, and Chris Hutchens, star in “Mind Games”.

There is a suggested $2 per person donation at the door for “Mind Games”.