For the past 47 years, the sprawling grounds of Harris Baptist Conference & Retreat Center – owned by the Bienville, Concord-Union and Webster-Claiborne associations – has provided retreats, camps, conferences and seminars for churches, organizations, and individuals.
Since 1960, Harris Baptist Conference & Retreat Center has been an oasis of tranquility in today’s busy world. Thousands of people are drawn to “Camp Harris” to experience God in a safe and secure Christian environment.
A description of the facility on the Camp Harris website.
MINDEN – For the past 47 years, the sprawling grounds of Harris Baptist Conference & Retreat Center – owned by the Bienville, Concord-Union and Webster-Claiborne associations – has provided retreats, camps, conferences and seminars for churches, organizations, and individuals.
Featuring four modern dormitories, 36 motel rooms, a cottage, conference center, gymnasium, auditorium, outdoor amphitheater and a large swimming pool, the facility annually draws more than 700 children to its summer camps, and countless others for retreats, conferences and seminars.
After last year, there is another service the facility can add to its list – the setting for a Hollywood movie.
For several weeks in late May of last year, the aging facility was transformed into a movie set by the Weinstein Production Company as it filmed The Great Debaters.
Inspired by a true story, The Great Debaters chronicles the journey of Professor Melvin Tolson (Denzel Washington), a brilliant but volatile debate team coach who in 1935 uses the power of words to help shape a group of young students from Wiley College, an African American college, near Marshall, Texas, into a elite debate team.
The movie, which was released on Christmas Day, is directed by Washington, and also stars Washington (a two-time Academy Award winning actor), as well as Forest Whitaker (another Academy Award winner), Jumee Smollett, Nate Parker, Denzel Whitaker and Kimbely Elise.
The facility’s age was key in Camp Harris being selected for the movie.
“This was originally a school, built before the depression in 1923. Classes were held here until 1950 when consolidation finally forced the school’s closure. Not long after it closed, the associations came in and bought it,” Harris director Mike Latham said.
“From what I am told, the gym here is the oldest in the state,” Latham said. “It was said to have been quite a facility back then. It is not bad now, but I can only imagine what it was like then.”
Completed in 1923 as an open-air basketball facility surrounded by classrooms, the gym had a dirt (hard-packed clay) floor. Five years later, the gym was roofed and a hardwood floor was installed. Amazingly, both have managed to survive more than 80 years of wear and tear.
“Early last year (2007), I got a call from a location scout, who asked a lot of questions about our facilities, and then asked if I would mind them coming out and taking some pictures of our gym, auditorium and other buildings,” Latham said. “I said OK and he came out and took more than 100 pictures, mostly of the gym and the auditorium. He also shot such things as the chairs, doors, windows, classrooms, the wooden backboards, and the different types of fixtures.” Latham said.
The initial meeting set in motion a series of events that quickly escalated as the movie’s director moved ahead on the project.
“Within a month I was contacted by a location manager (Kei Yung),” Latham said. “In the meantime, I had been doing some research on what type of movie the project was about. It didn’t take me long to discover Denzel Washington might be involved both in directing and acting in the movie.”
His suspicions were confirmed several weeks later when a rented Ford van arrived late in the evening filled with people. He didn’t recognize a one of them until the last person exited the van – Washington.
“It was a Thursday evening in late February when I got this call asking if some people could come out and look the facility over,” Latham said. “Little did I realize it, but the people in the van were the directors and producers of the movie. There were four Academy Award winners in there.
“The all took off in different directions looking the facility over, taking measurements, and sizing up the place,” Latham said, “while Denzel and I sort of stood by the van. He introduced himself and we just chatted. He asked a lot of questions about the school, the facility, and even my family.
“When everyone was finished, they loaded back up in the van,” Latham said. “As they were leaving, I was told to keep everything quiet, because they didn’t want a lot of people to know they were here.”
Latham, to protect the facility, got a script of the movie to read and present to the facilities board. “My biggest job was to convince 120 Baptist preachers it was OK to let them film a movie about a black college at Camp Harris. I had to make sure there wasn’t any bad stuff that would reflect badly on the facility.”
Latham said that while the movie has a PG rating, it is really a very clean movie, and the Camp Harris’ board agreed, at its April meeting, to allow the production company access to shoot there.
Over the next three months, Washington made 12 trips in secret to the facility, but he made sure his assistant always called to see if it was OK to come, which Latham appreciated. “They, he, were some of the nicest people to deal with. I know they were these big Hollywood types, but you could never tell by the way they treated everyone.”
Finally, a week before the Memorial Day weekend, a fleet of 53 semis, tractor-trailer rigs and trailers along with a small army of technicians, production crew, and actors arrived at the facility.
“It looked as if someone had kicked an ant hill,” Latham said. “They were all over the place transforming the gym and auditorium into a movie set. They made sure all of the fixtures were the same, and hid the things that were modern – fire alarm, light switches, and light fixtures. They were so detailed they went out and found thumbtacks and nails from that era.”
The production company brought in another small army of carpenters, electricians, and painters to come in and do all the work.
“It was truly amazing to watch,” Latham said. “They painted all the walls and made them appear old looking. They removed our old torn up shades and replaced them with new ones that actually looked old. Repaired the floor in our gym, put up black rims on the basketball goals, and completely redid the lighting and wiring in both our gym and auditorium.”
The carpenters also took down some old pieces of plywood revealing windows. The panes that were broken were fixed and the windows were restored.
The production company even brought its own air conditioning units – large enough to cool entire buildings – and ran ducts into the gym and auditorium. When the work – some $100,000 worth – was finally completed, the actors and extras were brought in for the filming.
More than 200 extras were brought in and the Sheriff’s Department shut down a dead end road a half-mile from the Camp Harris to allow them to park.
During the filming, Latham, who was busy preparing from the rapidly approaching camp season, had a chance to watch some of the filming and to get to know Washington. As a matter of fact, Latham’s 4-year-old son Shepard and the Academy-award winning actor hit it off.
“My mom and dad came up from Lake Charles and she wanted to meet him,” Latham said. “So, one day she just happened by the set with my two children and they had a break in the shooting. We were standing outside when he came out. I introduced everyone and he and Shepard hit it off big. As a matter of a fact, Shepard had a box of Hot Wheels cars with him and the two of them were soon playing with them on the steps of the gymnasium. It was quite a sight.
“Later that day all Shepard could talk about was his friend “George” Washington,” Latham said. “The name kind of stuck with the people on the set and when they referred to Washington on the radios that everyone had, they called him “George” Washington.”
The filming, as promised, wrapped in a week and the laborers returned to put the camp the way it was. Anything they had broken, such as the big fan in the gym, they replaced or fixed.
As far as the work, Latham asked if they would leave much of the carpentry and wiring untouched, as it was better than what they had had before. The production crew even left the handmade shades for the windows and doors.
While the production and filming of the movie was an unbelievable experience, Latham said getting to meet and know Washington proved just as exciting and unbelievable.
“He is truly a genuine person,” Latham said. “Here is this man who makes all this money and he is asking how my family is doing or how I am doing. He could have been standoffish, but he wasn’t.
“I discovered something else during the filming,” Latham said. “While I was making my rounds, I came up to the back of the gym and a black suburban and driver were sitting there. It was there for Washington and it took him wherever he wanted to go. I saw a Bible on the dash, and I asked the driver it was his. He told me ‘no, the Bible belongs to Mr. Washington.’
“He told me that Washington sits and reads it while they are driving. I found out later that the Bible is the only book he reads. In a recent Reader’s Digest article, I discovered Washington has read it through once already and has started reading it through for a second time,” Latham said. “It was just another reason why I knew I liked him.”
Besides the experiences and the repairs, Harris also received $10,000 from the production company for use of the facility. And while you want see their names in the film’s credits, their name is known in Hollywood circles.
“We have already been contacted several times since the filming ended,” Latham said. “And we had one location scout stop by and look at our swimming pool to see if it was old enough. Unfortunately, it wasn’t, but I feel we will get others. The crew liked how cooperative and easy to work with.”
Would Latham want to do it again? “Absolutely, it was an unbelievable experience.”