Based on Actual Events

Christian Toto

On the morning of April 20, 1999, 17-year-old Andrew Robinson was spending his lunch period editing video in his high school computer lab when the fire alarms began going off. Along with a few friends, Robinson made his way into the main hallway where he witnessed the chaos that had spread throughout Columbine High School. His peers were frantically running through the halls and diving under desks. Then the noise began: loud pops, screaming, and shattering glass mingled with the bellowing alarms. Robinson decided to escape through the band room.

Robinson's new film, April Showers, is loosely based on his experiences as a survivor of the Columbine High School massacre. In one particular scene, Sean (Kelly Blatz) leads the charge on a construction fence surrounding the high school, a piece of cinema culled directly from Robinson's recollections of that day. "With the help of my friends and a few other students, we knocked the fence down enough for everyone to climb or jump over as we ran into Clement Park," he says.

Robinson, who today calls the mountainous region of Santa Clarita, California, home, never intended to write about his high school's darkest day. But in the middle of writing a script for a hospital-themed drama, "I realized I was basing all of the [lead] character's problems on my own issues that stemmed from Columbine," he says.

Two and a half sleepless days later, he stared down at a 130-page draft about a school shooting and its aftermath. The screenplay, he says, tells a story still untold.

"Some said, "˜You have to do this. Please, please, please do this,' while others said, "˜Are you absolutely crazy? You of all people "¦ why would you want to revisit this?'" Robinson says. He wasn't sure if it was right to make a movie out of it, so he started asking around for advice.

Conversations with some of the filmmakers behind the movies United 93 and World Trade Center, both dealing with the September 11 attacks, helped convince him to go ahead with the project. "They faced the same dilemmas. "˜How dare they? It's too soon,' they said. Those conversations stopped when the films came out," Robinson says.

The new film, hitting theaters this month, tells the aftermath of a fictional school shooting that shatters the lives of a group of high school students.

Robinson, who wrote and directed the film, says his intention wasn't to point fingers or claim he knows how to prevent future tragedies. His hope is that the film restarts conversations about Columbine to help others who endured traumatic events and, he hopes, to prevent future tragedies.

"Hopefully, we'll use this as a springboard to pick up the discussion that I don't think was finished 10 years ago," says Robinson, now 27.

The independent film, shot in Omaha and at Plattsmouth High School in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, leaned heavily on film school interns to flesh out the cast while taking advantage of high-profile actors such as Tom Arnold, Illeana Douglas, and Daryl Sabara from the Spy Kids franchise.

"Tom Arnold was keen to play a true-to-life hero and made it his mission to represent educators all over this country as professionals who put their students above all else," says Robinson. "Tom's people were among the first to call us in preproduction, expressing his interest in the role of Martin Blackwell."

"I believed in this kid and the crew he assembled," Arnold says of taking the part. "As a kid who was raised by a single parent, there were very important moments in my life that were shaped by certain teachers. To be a small part of a film like this is not how you pay the bills, but I think it's the right thing to do."

Robinson tried to impart some of the lessons he learned over the last decade to his actors but admits filming the crucial shooting sequence took its toll.

"I've had time to process it, understand it, and come to grips with it "¦ but I had 500 students who don't know these emotions. I had to put them in that place. It's difficult to scare young people on a daily basis," he says.

Kristi Mohrbacher, 26, was a junior at Columbine when the shootings occurred. When she heard about April Showers, she volunteered to provide PR help to the independent filmmakers.

"I think that, in the years following the shootings, some of the humanity and reality of the long-term pain and suffering caused by the tragedy got lost in the search for the causes of the shootings," she says. "It's noble and important that Andrew wants to remind people about accepting peers, communicating, interaction, supporting others, and to keep that dialogue going."

Robinson's film could help play a part in changing the current cycle of violence, says John Simmons, director of communications with Englewood-based School Safety Partners. "They discovered the shooter at Virginia Tech idolized the shooters at Columbine when he was in middle school. How many students have come to idolize him?"

By casting popular young actors like Spy Kids' Sabara, Robinson hopes to offer a different chain reaction and to provide healthier role models for children to emulate.

The film's proceeds from the first week of release will be donated to schools and police departments in the cities showing the movie. An educational outreach effort is also in the works.

Robinson hopes the money raised will go toward small but crucial additions to schools nationwide like expanded art programs. "I'd be nowhere if it wasn't for the arts programs at Columbine. That was my outlet," he says. "[The arts] allow people to express themselves in ways that aren't violent."

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