An Alum Creek native has raised the money he needs to make his movie, “Unlovable,” which will be set in West Virginia.
“It’s a real simple story, real sweet story about a woman from a trailer park in West Virginia who contracted HIV as a child and is now trying to find self acceptance and falling in love for the first time,” said director Jon Matthews.
“This is a sincere, honest love story.”
Film producer Abby Wathen, who has family members in the Charleston area, will play the lead character, Shelby, in the film.
“She’s never been kissed. She has this disease. She lives in a small town so everyone knows about it and they, kind of, treat her like an outsider,” Wathen said on Wednesday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
Matthews and Wathen said they want to start filming “Unlovable” in the southern part of the state this October, and it looks like they have the funding they need to do so.
As of early Thursday afternoon, 114 backers had pledged $25,225 on kickstarter.com for the project. The goal had been to raise $25,000 by this Sunday.
Kickstarter.com is a crowd-sourcing website dedicated to finding investors for all walks of people proposing any number of different projects.
Here is the link for the “Unlovable” Kickstarter page.
Matthews said he wants to make the film and then find a distributor, possibly, by showing it at film festivals.
He finished his graduate work at New York University last year, attending film school after spending seven years practicing civil rights law.
Wherever he has gone, Matthews said West Virginia has always been a part of him and he wants to showcase his native state on the big screen.
“It is like my dream come true,” Matthews said. “I’m coming back to my home state.”