Rome News Tribune, 30 April 2005
By Severo Avila
**Thanks, Jude

Summerville will be thrust into the limelight tonight when a movie that was recently filmed there airs on HBO.

A production crew was in Summerville last fall to film "Warm Springs," which is based on the life of former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his struggle with polio.

The movie airs tonight on HBO at 8 p.m. and will continue airing throughout May.

"Warm Springs" tells the story of FDR, left a paraplegic from the disease at the age of 39, as he seeks out a miracle cure in the backwoods of rural Georgia.

Instead he finds poverty, illiteracy and racism and realizes that though he may never walk again, he can lead. And in Warm Springs a future four-term American president finds his calling.

Directed by Joseph Sargent, the film stars Emmy Award winners Kenneth Branagh and Cynthia Nixon as Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Branagh is known for his title roles in film adaptations of several Shakespearean plays. Nixon is best known for her portrayal of Miranda Hobbs on HBO's "Sex and the City."

Rounding out the all-star cast are Emmy Award winner Jane Alexander, and Tony Award nominee and Oscar winner Kathy Bates.

Ten-year-old Deedra Bourne of Floyd County was an extra in several scenes.

"I got to walk with this boy down the street. I sat in a wagon, and my movie dad pulled me out, and I was late for school," recalled the Johnson Elementary School fourth-grader. "I wasn't nervous. I've got stage fright, but not camera fright."

Bourne was especially excited to meet Branagh and Nixon.

"I got to meet Professor Lockhart of Harry Potter," she said of Branagh. "That was amazing."

Bourne said she's looking forward to seeing herself in the movie, although she didn't have any lines.

"I didn't get to talk because of these," she said, pointing to a mouth full of braces.