By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Steve Hanson returns to Bowling Green State University, he will have stories to tell about telling stories. His story as a multimedia entrepreneur starts with his time at BGSU.
“Bowling Green taught me how to think, how to tell a story,” the 1975 graduate said in a recent telephone interview. As a photojournalism major that education included late night calls from Professor Jim Gordon. Hanson, then photo editor of the Key, lived with Joe Darwal, then photo editor of The BG News.
When Gordon called it wasn’t just to say hello, it was usually to deliver blunt critiques of their most recent work. “It is that kind of mentoring that takes us to a different level,” he said.
Hanson will participate in Bravo! BGSU Saturday in the Wolfe Center for the Arts Saturday from 7 to 10 p.m. For tickets, call 419-372-6780. He’ll show excerpts from the film “The Prophet,” which he produced, from 7:30 to 8 in the Donnell Theatre. (See related story: http://bgindependentmedia.org/2016/03/25/bgsu-putting-on-the-glitz-to-raise-money-for-arts-scholarships/)
Then on Sunday he’ll kick off the university’s E-Week activities with a screening of “The Prophet” at 8 p.m., also in the Donnell. On Monday, he’ll discuss the making of the film at a Lunch and Learn session from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in The David J. Joseph Company Business Hub on the second floor of the College of Business.
The first stirrings of the film began back in his undergraduate days. That’s when he read Lebanese writer Kahlil Gibran’s inspirational book “The Prophet.”
It was a time of great turmoil,” Hanson said, and as a photojournalist he was in the middle of it. He remembers digging a hole to look like a bomb crater to illustrate a story.
He was also a pioneer. Working with Gene Poor, he had a “self-proclaimed” minor in visual communications. This was before the days of the Department of Visual Communications Technology.
This served him well as he moved from photojournalism into multi-media production. The change is not so radical. It’s all about storytelling, he said. That may be a story about how to be a better employee or why you should insulate your house with Owens-Corning’s signature pink insulation. “Those are all stories,” he said.
Some of those industrial productions cost in the seven figures to make, he said. None was on the scale, however, of an internationally distributed feature-length film.
Some 30 years after graduating from BGSU, and having first read “The Prophet,” one of the top selling books of all time, Hanson learned that no one had ever secured the film rights. “I really felt this book was a story that needed to be told in a way that hadn’t been done,” he said.
So the long journey to bring “The Prophet” to the big screen began. The rights were held by Gibran’s sister, and it took six years to secure them. Despite the size and complexity of the undertaking, Hanson relied on the same methods he used for all his Hanson Inc. projects.
“We had a nice kind of chunk of experience working for great clients and crafting their message,” he said. “The premise of sourcing the right people at the right time is the pretty much the same no matter what you’re doing. I’ve always surrounded myself with excellent people then stepped out of the way. … That’s part of being an entrepreneur.”
That meant contracting with Hollywood insiders including director Roger Allers and Salma Hayek, who worked both as a voice actor and producer. Gabriel Yared composed the score which was recorded on the soundstage at Abbey Road Studio in London by a 135-piece orchestra. And it meant raising $11.5 million.
What started as a live action movie turned into an animated film. “That was stroke of genius because it allowed us to do the interpretive side of what each of those chapters was about,” he said. The chapters were linked together with a frame story narrated by Hayek.
The film was released in 2015 to generally positive reviews. While it didn’t break any box office records, Hanson said, in places where it did catch on it drew good crowds. That included Toledo where a special six-day run was extended to three weeks.
That’s where BGSU Provost Rodney Rogers saw it and suggested that the film should be shown on campus. So Hanson will visit BGSU to talk about both the artistic side and the business side of project.
“My message is about constantly pushing,” Hanson said. “Don’t be afraid to fail – I think I’ve lost more money than I’ve made. It’s constantly pushing the envelope to do it. You have to have a plan. It’s not just about a great idea, it’s about having market viability.”
So when he set out to find the $11.5 million to finance “The Prophet” without even a screenplay, he was still holding a book that had proved its enduring popularity in the market. That, he said, “kind of changes the game.”
