GRAND RAPIDS — Sometimes childhood dreams become real. That’s the case with with Frank Higgins, an uneducated Canadian boy who wanted to be a preacher.
Higgins' life is portrayed in The Parish of the Pines, a new film by Lost Story Cinema. The story follows Higgins as a farm boy with a sixth-grade education who became a preacher for men in Minnesota's remote logging camps at the turn of the century.
Stephen Miller was intrigued by the story of loggers packed in like sardines to the hardscrabble logging camps in Northern Minnesota, where they were often mistreated by the logging companies.
Miller is a producer, songwriter and actor who recently stopped by the KAXE Morning Show to talk about the red-carpet premiere, the process of filmmaking and how it affected his family.
Miller and his wife took their young boys on location while filming The Parish of the Pines, as they tried to find places that resembled the landscape of Northern Minnesota in the early 1900s, like southeast Alaska with large pines and bears.
It was difficult at times.
“I had a shotgun strapped onto my chest,” he said. “And then I had this big film camera.”
The Parish of the Pines is showing at the Reif Center in Grand Rapids Thursday, Aug. 24, with a red-carpet premiere. Doors open at 5 p.m., with the film to follow at 6 p.m.
The second showing in Grand Rapids is 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 31. Tickets are available through the Reif Center.
Listen to the full KAXE Morning Show conversation with Miller above.
