Asheville Filmmaker Plans Social-Media Themed Comedy in Her Hometown

Last Sunday, I caught about 20 minutes of You've Got Mail and giggled when I saw Meg Ryan waiting for her dial-up modem to connect to the Internet so she could log her into AOL account, so she then could see whether Tom Hanks had sent her another message.

Remember the sound of dial-up?

Then I wondered, "When are we going to have a new wave of blockbusters that correspond to our newer forms of social networking, featuring things like Tweetups, not-so-chance-meetings because of Foursquare, or perhaps something along the lines of Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist but with a blip.fm twist?"

Film production companies have been marketing movies on MySpace and Facebook for a while, and many A-list celebrities have been shouting from their laptops into the Twitterverse almost as long. However, I'm surprised that we've not seen any big productions – yet – that heavily interweave everyday social media channels into the plot, other than the Facebook movie, The Social Network, that is supposed to be released in October.

I'll follow that statement with a disclaimer: I don't go to movies much, so it's likely I may have missed something. Along the same line, I have terrible cable channel options, as I haven't had enough room in my heart for cable ever since MTV made a marked shift away from actually playing music.

Remember the first video on MTV, The Buggles' Video Killed The Radio Star?

So maybe the Facebook movie will be the first, but I also saw a tweet this morning that interests me even more than Justin Timberlake playing the role of Facebook Founding President Sean Parker. According to @AskAsheville via @GSocialMedia not only is another film of this type on its way, but it will also be marketed largely through social media channels, and it will be filmed in one of JCI's communities, Asheville, N.C., for which we produce Asheville Travel Guide, Asheville magazine, imagesasheville.com and feature on Livability.com.

The movie is being created by Asheville filmmaker, writer and comedienne Angela Shelton, a name you may know from the 1999 film Tumbleweeds, which she co-wrote (it has an awesome soundtrack, by the way). More recently, Shelton has gained a higher profile through her documentary and book by the same name, Searching for Angela Shelton, for which she drove around the country, seeking out all of the other Angela Sheltons she could find. She thought this concept would yield mostly funny stories, but through her interviews she also discovered that most of them shared something else with her besides a name: Seventy percent of these women had also been abused at some point in their lives.

As friends and supporters promoted the film and book via Facebook, Twitter and MySpace, Shelton saw the power of social media. That power, combined with her desire to switch gears to focus more on her comedic skills, inspired this new movie, a romantic comedy titled Online Dating for Food. Yes, there already is an OnlineDatingForFood facebook page for the film, but here's another disclaimer: Be aware that if you "like" it, people may just think you're into the act of online dating for food and not the film. I'm not making any judgment one way or the other on online dating, you just may not want to advertise that you're doing it for food. That could ruin your whole plan!

A movie involving food in Asheville makes perfect sense, of course. Shelton knows her hometown of Foodtopia. The social media aspects will make it only more interesting.

Will it be as big as You've Got Mail or The Social Network? That remains to be seen, but stay tuned to your favorite social media channels to watch it develop.

In the meantime, you can learn more about Angela Shelton and her latest project at Angela Shelton's website, and here is the link to the interview with @AskAsheville about Online Dating for Food and why she's hoping to do this film (and two others) in Asheville.