Boxoffice-August.11.1975

1
Earl Owensby Determined to Expand
Filmmaking Industry in
SHELBY, N.C.—The roar of the race
track, the smell of the grease paint— those
are the images guiding Earl Owensby's
senses as a moviemaker here.
For Owensby, an industrialist-tumed-filmmaker,
is determined to put North Carolina
on the map as a place to make films, with
his product in the foreground. To do that
he has turned to racecar driving, a dangerous
occupation for those not acquainted
with 70 mph leaps off ramps or stunt
crashes into burning buildings.
Owensby is determined, however, to
.prove that filmmaking can be a big industry
here, as a Charlotte Observer reporter
discovered recently during an interview with
the young, forward-looking producer and
star.
Parts of the interview by Wayne Nicholas
follow;
Earl Owensby. an industrialist-turnedmoviemaker,
likes to retell Russell Conwell's
lecture, entitled "Acres of Diamonds." in
which a man sold his farm, left his family,
and went on a futile search around the
world for diamonds.
Finally, the man, finding nothing, committed
suicide. But the man who bought his
farm simply walked out to the fountain in
the back yard and spotted a fabulous diamond.
Later he found out the whole farm
was sitting on top of one of the world's
greatest diamond mines.
"That's what I hope to do," Owensby, the
soft-spoken multimillianaire. says.
The Diamond in Owensby's 44-acre back
yard—a sparkling new movie studio complex—has
its own kind of glitter. The swank
complex includes a blue-carpeted office
building, a two-story, A-frame house that
serves as a combination guesthouse, screening
room and modern studio.
Owensby hopes it's just the beginning.
The 39-year-old moviemaker spent his
schoolboy days living with his adoptive
parents in the Rutherford County mill village
of Cliffside, where his afternoon and
Carolinas
evening hours were spent running the projector,
popping corn, taking tickets and
cleaning up at the local theatre.
Then one morning a little over two years
FINER PROJECTION -SUPER ECONOMY]