Tales of Casons go rolling along on the screen

Just about everybody who lives in Charlottesville knows about the City Market. What people might not know is that they have the Cason family to thank for the cornucopia of vegetables and flowers.

George Cason has been credited with the idea of selling fresh produce in the early 1970s, and 30-some years later, you will still find George and two of his brothers actively working their stand on Saturday mornings.

But that’s only part of the Cason story.

Doug Bari, a local filmmaker from Doug and Judy Productions, will be screening his latest project for free Thursday night at Piedmont Virginia Community College. It tells the story of all eight Casons — seven sons and one daughter.

“My wife, Judy, and I were working on documentaries, and we had a friend who came to us and said, ‘Hey I think I have an interesting subject for you,’ ” Doug Bari said.

It turned out to be the Cason family.

“It was basically seven brothers and one sister, all born during the Depression era, all born at home on a farm in the Charlottesville area,” Bari said. “World War II broke out, all of the brothers got into the military, all came back, all married hometown girls.”

Six served in the Pacific Theater, including Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

Sister Nancy helped care for the family farm while Ezra, Charles, George, Billy, Jack, Ralph and Lee were serving in the Armed Forces.

After returning home safely, four of the boys eventually started the City Market, Bari said.

“Three are still actively doing it,” he said, “George, Jack and Billy.”

The fourth, brother Lee, passed away in ’82.

“There is a special section in the film about him,” Bari said.

“He died unexpectedly in a restaurant down at the Corner. He was having lunch with one of his other brothers. He just said, “I don’t feel well,’ put his head down and that was it.”

While the film pays tribute to an

American family, convincing the Casons to be a part of the project was another matter.

“The guy who brought us the story is an owner of a video store, and one of [the Casons’] relatives actually worked in the store with him,” Bari said. “The Hook did a cover story in about 2004 about the Cason family. So he had seen that years ago and brought that to my attention.”

Bari went to see a niece of the family.

“I had to beg her just a little bit, but she got me in touch with one of the wives,” he said.

“That was a little bit touchy at first. ‘Why are you calling us? What do you want from us?’ It was kind of hard to make them feel that we were going to do this because we wanted to do it; nobody is going to get charged a dime.”

The one wife said OK and brought in a second wife.

“Those two wives convinced their husbands that it would be interesting to talk to me,” he said.

“Once I got the first one, that was it. It was like all the stones fell at that point.”

Bari started with the oldest, 92-year-old Ezra.

“He sat there and said, ‘Well, what do you want to ask me?’ I said, ‘I would actually like to know about your whole life.’ We will just start at the beginning, from when you were born.

“So he literally wrapped this up in like three minutes, his whole life. Then he said, ‘Well, I’m done.’ ”

Bari started packing up his camera.

“Then he started to say a little bit more, so I unpacked the camera,” Bari said. “And, wow, we talked for hours after that.”

The great part about the film, Bari said, is this was the first time that all of the family members have seen their photographs from the past in one place.

“For a lot of them, it was the first time that they had seen some of these photographs,” he said.

“It was the first time that we got Lee’s voice from an audio tape, which is the only surviving piece of media that has his voice on it. We put that in the film.”

He also got the siblings to tell stories that they had not told anyone else.

“I remember when the family historian was watching it with me, she was like ‘Wow, they have never told that story. Why did they tell you that?’

“I can’t tell you. Let’s just see what happens, and turn the camera on.”

He ended up with 17 hours of footage and whittled it down to 99 minutes. The finished product would be a gift to the Casons.

“I was just going to give it to them,” said the filmmaker, who has had two works shown at the Virginia Film Festival. “My wife and I started a business about a year ago where we make memoirs for people, and we were looking for examples.

“We were looking for models to see how many hours we put into these things. That was definitely a side part of it in that it helped us greatly in how to figure out how we could gauge this in the future. Our intent is to make memoirs for families.

“I don’t think there was ever any intent, on our part, to go take it to festivals, or go national. It was just going to be a gift.”

The Baris did screen their feature film “Cold Readings” at the local film fest in 2004 and a short on Conrad Brooks — one of the last surviving cast members from “Plan Nine From Outer Space” — this past November.

“He lives in a trailer in West Virginia,” Bari said.

“I went up and spent a day with him. That was a lot of fun for me, because I remember all these films when I was a kid.”

Brooks, who played one of the policemen in the “worst movie ever made,” had come to Charlottesville years ago for an event at one of the Plan 9 stores.

“He remembered Charlottesville,” Bari said. “I live in Stanardsville, and the horror director [who took Bari to West Virginia] lives in Charlottesville.

The horror director answered him first, and Conrad said, ‘Oh, so you are rich.’ So there is that impression out there. … Maybe some of us, but not all of us.”

But Charlottesville has been very rewarding for the husband-and-wife team, who met in Germany while acting in a play.

After 20 years on stage, the couple focused their attention on filmmaking during the digital revolution. And they have found good stories, like the Casons, and a wealth of talent and support.

“The Charlottesville area has been very generous to us as filmmakers,” he said. “Even when we were trying to film in a supermarket for a little parody that we were doing a couple of years ago, nobody would give us a supermarket, until we went to Reid’s. They were like, ‘Yeah, you can come anytime you want. We will open the store for you.’

“We have had opportunities like that all over Charlottesville, where people have been very kind.”

And they have worked in places from Southern California and New York to South Carolina and Virginia Beach.

“I really like Charlottesville,” he said. “I have moved around all my life, every five or six years, and this is one of the first places that I really felt like home.”

And, luckily for us, it’s still home for the Casons, too.

Details

“Growing Up Cason” screening

7 p.m. Thursday

V. Earl Dickinson Building at Piedmont Virginia Community College

Free

985-6176