Charleston-based 'Wise Kids' winning honors

Wise move.

Stephen Cone was determined that his second feature film, "The Wise Kids," would be cut from a different cloth than the customary "coming-of-age" story.

The Chicago-based writer-director, son of Frank and Judy Cone of Charleston, had no interest in doing a movie about layabouts or slackers that would disappear from view, and memory, a week after opening.

Instead, he has produced an award-winning picture that's won hearts on the festival circuit and earned a rave from critic Roger Ebert.

Cone brings his film to the Hippodrome Widescreen Cinemas for a limited engagement at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. next Sunday, accompanied by cast members Molly Kunz, Tyler Ross and Allison Torem.

Shot on location in Charleston in the summer of 2010, "The Wise Kids" blends the talents of an ensemble cast of Chicago and Charleston actors, the latter including Pure Theatre stalwarts Rodney Lee Rogers and Sharon Graci.

The movie already has captured the Outfest Grand Jury Prizes for Outstanding U.S. Feature and Outstanding Screenwriting and the Audience Award for U.S. Narrative at

NewFest in New York, among other honors.

"A lot of teenagers are brooding and passive and apathetic," says Cone. "I'm interested in teenagers who are actually engaged with the world and with themselves and are interested in opening themselves up to life, growing and becoming better."

Set in and around a Charleston Baptist church, the film was familiar turf for the filmmaker, in that his father is pastor of Rutledge Baptist Church.

"I'm the son of a Baptist minister, so I always knew I'd make my church kids movie one day," says Cone, 29, who grew up in Florence, Columbia and Charleston. "The story is about that important transitional space between high school and college when one leaves home and starts becoming an adult. It's based on the kids I grew up with in church youth groups, but the church is mainly a backdrop. First and foremost, the movie is about people."

Cone, whose debut feature was "In Memoriam," established the production company Cone Arts in 2005 to make his own short, experimental and low-budget commercial features. He also is the writer-director of the short films "Church Story," "Young Wives" and "7 Experiments" and the "mid-length" film "The Christians."

As a playwright, Cone's work has been performed in New York, Chicago and Austin, Texas.

This past summer he made his stage acting debut in Philip Dawkins' "The Homosexuals" at the About Face Theatre in Chicago.

For more information, visit www.thefilmcollaborative.org/films/thewisekids.html and www.thewisekids.com.

Reach Bill Thompson at 937-5707.