Originally, the action-thriller “Homefront” was set in Minnesota. When Chuck Logan’s novel was adapted for the screen, the setting was swapped for an unnamed Southern town. But when director Gary Fleder showed up in New Orleans to start preproduction on the film — starring Jason Statham, James Franco and Kate Bosworth, and arriving in theaters Wednesday (Nov. 27) — it became immediately evident to him that Louisiana would be taking a front-and-center role.

Louisiana made sure of that.

“For me, the location scouting process becomes a big part of what informs (a project),” Fleder said. “Rather than looking at what’s in my head, I just sort of look around to see what’s there.”

What was there when Fleder and company arrived in town in late summer 2012 to prepare for “Homefront” were waterways and cypress trees, boat houses and creaky old homes that suggested a certain derelict, lived-in beauty. The more Fleder and company explored, the more ideas they got for making the film stand out visually, he said.

“For example, we found this beautiful, beautiful home that had been seriously damaged in Katrina and sat idle for years,” Fleder said. “It was really overgrown and beaten down. All we really did was sort of shaved down some of the landscaping, some of the greens, and shot the house as it was. That’s Franco’s house, where he’s on the porch, and I think that’s a great example of where we let the locations speak to us through the process, which I love doing.”

In describing that process, he uses words like “organic” and “embracing” his surroundings. In “Homefront,” the result is a movie that, if nothing else, oozes its Louisiana origins in nearly every frame, but — according to Fleder, a Virginia native who also shot “Runaway Jury” in New Orleans in 2002 — always with a mind to steer clear of the Southern cliches we’ve all seen, and been insulted by, so many times before. 

In another scene — a key third-act sequence shot at Magnolia Plantation at Nine Mile Point, and in which the home of Statham’s character is set upon by a band of baddies — Fleder didn’t just let the landscape dictate the look of the scene. He let it dictate the very way the action played out.

“There’s a whole sequence in the movie where the bad guys come into Jason Statham’s home by boat,” he said. “Now, it wasn’t written that way. It was originally written that they drive there. But I said, ‘Man, there’s so much water and all the bayou.’

“It’s a very organic process where, again, the location scouting and really being in areas — the West Bank, Slidell, Ponchatoula, Manchac, Gretna, Westwego, all the places we filmed in different parts of the movie — you take all these photos of locations and you say, ‘Wow, look at this beautiful tree, this beautiful light, this road, the water, and that begs to be in the movie.”

All that distinctly Louisiana imagery, however, presents something of a double-edged sword. While it provides a filmmaker with ample inspiration for beautiful shots, it’s not so easy as it might sound to avoid stepping over the line into cliché. That doesn’t just go for the landscape, but also for Southern characters as well — not to mention any accents they use, as any New Orleanian who has seen “The Big Easy” will gladly tell you.

It becomes even touchier in a movie such as “Homefront,” which is built around the antagonistic behavior of locals toward Statham’s character, a drug enforcement agent looking to settle down to a slower pace of life with his young daughter. But Fleder said his background makes him sensitive to the Southern cliché and how it can quickly become insulting.

“I had this conversation with this wonderful casting director named Lisa Mae Fincannon, who does a lot of casting in the Southeast,” Fleder said. “She does tons of movies — I worked with her on ‘Runaway Jury,’ I worked with her on ‘From the Earth to the Moon’ years ago in Orlando. And I said to her, ‘I want everybody in this movie to be a character not a caricature.'”

He continued: “If you look at (‘Homefront’), some of the characters have accents, some of them don’t. Some of them have deeper accents than others. In fact, when I did ‘Runaway Jury,’ I said to the people on the jury, I said, ‘Look, if you can’t do a realistic regional accent, just do your regular accent. Because people from New Orleans come from other places, people from the South come from other places.”

So, sure, sometimes we sound like Paul Prudhomme, sometimes we sound like Troy Landry, sometimes we sound like Edwin Edwards — but sometimes we also sound like Tony Soprano or Lil’ Wayne or Uncle Si Robertson.

Another double-edged sword with which “Homefront” will have to contend is its release date. On the one hand, it’s encouraging that Open Road Films has enough confidence in Fleder’s movie to schedule it to open on the day before Thanksgiving, typically a busy moviegoing weekend. On the other hand, that means there will be tons of competition with which it will have to contend, from the likes of Disney’s animated “Frozen,” the literary dramas “Black Nativity” and “The Book Thief,” as well as from another New Orleans-shot film, director Spike Lee’s “Oldboy.”

What it has going for it, however, is that it’s the only straight-up action film slated for release in that period. In fact, as evidence of its action pedigree, “Homefront” was originally developed as a starring vehicle for Sylvester Stallone, who — while eventually moving on to other roles — wrote the screenplay and earns a producing credit on the film.

“I think that the play was that it’s a really, really good suspense thriller/action movie,” Fleder said. “Audiences like it, it played really well, it’s wildly entertaining, and I think of all my movies, it’s just a major, major popcorn movie — and that was the intention. … You sit down, and once the movie starts, from fade-up to fade out, people are just in the movie. There’s not a lot of dead air. It just flies.

“I think if people want to see a really good suspense thriller action movie over the holiday,” he added, “this is the one.”

LOYALTON – Upper Dauphin Area Middle School students have an answer to the age-old question about learning: When am I ever going to put this to practical use?

As part of a “Real World Math Course,” eighth-graders made improvements to the school’s existing courtyard using creativity, math and technology skills.

“I liked going outside and making what we planned on doing possible,” Bailey Maurer, Spring Glen, a member of “The Constructioners” winning team, said. “The rendering of the site was probably the most difficult to do because I had never done anything like that before.”

Principal Michael Sim portrayed a potential customer, who said he needed help with landscaping and redesigning the courtyard.

Teams of students were tasked with the job of calculating the perimeter, area and volume, the cubic feet of flower beds and how many yards of mulch would be required to fill each bed. The teams determined where to purchase the mulch after acquiring quotes from local businesses.

The students did a scale drawing of the plot on graph paper, designed a computerized rendering of their idea using Google SketchUp and presented their ideas and developmental drawings to district staff and administrators.

The final part of the 11-week project required selecting a winning presentation and having the students actually install the design in the courtyard, based on their calculations and under the guidance of Blake Dutweiler, technology education instructor and Dan Frake, computer instructor, who co-taught the class.

This is the first year for the course, which was created to challenge eighth-graders who scored well on standardized tests and other benchmark data in the classroom.

Joining Maurer on the winning team were Ryan Strohecker and Jeff Klinger.

“All three of us are good in math, our calculations were correct and we had some good ideas,” Maurer said when asked why his team’s design was selected.

The other participating teams included “The Trojans Landscaping,” “The Wild Flowers,” “The Mighty Morphan Flower Arrangers,” “Mulching Monkeys” and “The Time Breakers.”

Elements from several teams were incorporated into one winning final design, which Maurer put together for the final computerized rendering. Then the class put its plans into action and began the actual upgrades.

“I like being outside and playing in the dirt,” said Morgan Maurer, Elizabethville (no relation to Bailey). “I like to do ‘guy’ things and I’d rather be out than sit inside.”

As a member of the Mighty Morphan Flower Arrangers team, Morgan Maurer said doing the math calculations was the toughest part of the course. She was the only team member, according to her instructors, that was confident enough to use the power edger while making the necessary improvements at the site.

“Instead of just talking about it, I liked that we actually got to do it ourselves,” she said.

Another classmate, Brittany Kinney, Elizabethville, said she thought the effort to do the calculations and proper pre-planning was well worth it.

“It’s a lot neater and cleaner now,” she said.

Keegan Kerstetter, meanwhile, thought figuring out the patterns and doing the rendering was the most challenging aspect of the course.

“Finishing it up and putting the final touches on the courtyard, and deciding what type of plants that we’d use was my favorite part,” said Kerstetter, Elizabethville.

Strohecker could see the course’s practical uses.

“I think it can help you in the future. One day when you have your own home, you can figure this out for yourself,” said Strohecker, Spring Glen.

Some of the improvements made at the site included adding walkway stones leading to a bridge in the center; power-washing and clean-coating wooden picnic tables there; redesigning the layout and including spaces for mulched flower beds, bird feeders and a maple tree. Staff members donated items for the class and also held dress-down “jeans” days to help raise funds for improvements, which students estimated to cost around $600.

“Once they got the hang of things, it went well,” Frake said. “From the start to the end of the project, they’ve enjoyed it and want to do more of this. They’ve executed it very well.”

“I was extremely surprised with how it turned out,” Dutweiler added. “There were limited items that needed to be fixed and their work ethic was ten times harder, I think, knowing that this (courtyard) will be here when they move on to the high school.”

Another rotation of eighth-graders will make similar improvements to the front of the school building grounds, Sim said.

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Lights and landscaping on the Loudon Road bridge leading to Main Street. Sculptures resembling Concord’s skyline along Interstate 93. A mosaic on the highway underpass at Exit 14.

Those ideas, shared last week, are the latest developments in the Greater Concord Chamber of Commerce’s effort to improve the view of Concord from the highway and attract visitors to Main Street.

A small committee, called Concord’s New Front Door, held a brainstorming session this spring. Last week, chairman and local architect Chris Carley presented the most promising and feasible ideas.

“We did choose to focus on ones that we felt had the most short-term promise,” Carley said.

He showed images of a skyline-like sculpture between the highway and the Capitol Shopping Center on Storrs Street. That design draws attention to the backs of buildings on Main Street, Carley said. The backside of those buildings could also be lined with small white lights at night.

But the ideas have no official plan, price tag or timeline.

“We have intentionally kept things vague and I encourage you to look at these sketches as springboards for how we might do things as opposed to proposals that either need to be accepted or rejected,” Carley told the small crowd gathered for his presentation at the Grappone Conference Center last week.

Other ideas include public art along the directional signs on the Loudon Road bridge at the intersection with Main Street that form an archway over the road.

Carley showed images of Bridge Street with banners hanging from light poles, flower beds in the concrete median and colored lights strung through the fences.

Additional public art could be placed in the grassy areas at Exit 14, Carley said, where motorists often sit and wait at red lights.

“This is an opportunity, since we have a captive audience, to tell them something about downtown,” he said.

The presentation drew mixed reactions Monday night, with some residents saying the designs may negatively affect Concord’s historical character.

“People come and shop and stop in Concord not because it’s a flashy, pretty city, they come because of the historical significance of Concord, New Hampshire, and that’s what we’ve got to concentrate on,” said Conrad Young, an artist and retired owner of Young Associates advertising firm.

But several other residents praised the ideas.

“While I completely appreciate the desire to preserve the historical aspect of Concord, which is something that all of us love, I also want to be aware of what the changing demographic is . . . and what is it that’s going to entice the younger families and the younger generation, the next generation wanting to come here,” said Tonya Rochette, president of Intown Concord’s board of directors.

Liz Hengen, a local historic preservationist, suggested that modern designs along the highway and entrance points to Main Street relate in some way to the historic Main Street.

“I think that downtown Main Street stands on its own merits and it doesn’t preclude doing something very dynamic or very contemporary along this part here,” she said.

There are other areas the committee would like to improve but have not yet explored, Carley said, like the power substation next to the Ralph Pill Marketplace and the view of the legislative parking garage on Storrs Street.

Carley said the New Front Door group, part of the chamber of commerce’s Creative Concord Committee, will now work to define the costs of moving forward. The group will also identify obstacles, like city permitting and permission from property owners. He said there may be available grant funding for public art.

“I’ve heard not necessarily agreement on the details tonight, but I’ve heard a general consensus that something needs to happen out here,” Carley said.

Carley said the group will work to move the project forward.

“These things take many years, and bits and pieces happen and bits of pieces never do,” he said.

To view the New Front Door slideshow, visit concordnhchamber.com.

Handmade for the holidays

Concord Handmade has returned for a third holiday season on Main Street.

Owner Alison Murphy opened the holiday pop-up shop Friday, and will close for the season Dec. 29.

She is selling handmade goods from about 50 different local artists at 2 N. Main St., the corner of Main and Pleasant streets.

“I’d say we maybe have 10 to 15 new artists this year,” Murphy said.

This year’s new items include clothes, cat toys and housewares.

Permitted parking

About 60 parking spaces on Storrs Street could be reopened as discounted permit parking for downtown employees.

The city’s parking committee recommended using the spaces during construction on Main Street next year. Matt Walsh, the city’s director of redevelopment, downtown services and special projects, said the committee employees would use the spaces, leaving more convenient parking open for downtown shoppers.

“The trade-off is it’s a little out of the way, but at the same time, it would be very inexpensive to park at,” Walsh said.

The city council gave City Manager Tom Aspell the authority earlier this year to change parking regulations during the upcoming renovations on Main Street. Walsh said he is reviewing whether the Storrs Street recommendation must go before the city council, or whether that vote gave Aspell the authority to begin the changes.

Walsh said the spaces will open before the start of construction next spring.

The parking committee suggested a rate of $33 per month, according to meeting minutes, but recommended giving Aspell flexibility to set the rate. When the spaces are opened, parking permits will be sold through the city’s parking division.

Grinch at Gibson’s

Gibson’s Bookstore wants Concord kids to do good deeds this holiday season.

The store is participating in Random House Publishing’s Grinch Community Cares Project. Now through Midnight Merriment on Dec. 6, customers can pick up a bingo card at Gibson’s that lists 25 good deeds.

“It ranges from help making dinner, tell everyone in your family that you love them, to donating some toys to charity,” said Isabel Berg, Gibson’s children’s book specialist.

After completing three deeds, kids can return to the bookstore with their card and Random House will donate a book to a local child. Five good deeds earns kids a pin that says, “I grew my heart three sizes,” echoing a line from How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

The program also promotes shopping locally; customers who complete 10 deeds and bring three receipts from local businesses will receive a Grinch activity packet and will be entered in a drawing to win gift certificates from shops in downtown Concord.

Happy Thanksgiving

City offices will be closed Thursday and Friday for Thanksgiving.

Downtown parking is free both days.

(Laura McCrystal can be reached at 369-3312 or @lmccrystal.)