by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
The filming of a John Travolta movie along Forsyth Street has prompted plenty of stopping and staring, but surprisingly an unknown Daytona Beach man has been responsible for more of the rubbernecking than the movie’s stars.
As the owner of Innovative Transport, Kevin Craig is the man in charge of rounding up the fleet of classic cars used in “Lonely Hearts,” a detective drama set in the late 1940s and early ‘50s. Craig is no stranger to movie sets, having starring Will Smith. Craig had just wrapped up work on the upcoming Dukes of Hazzard movie before he came to Jacksonville.
Craig doesn’t own the cars, he finds them. He works out deals with dealers or individual owners to use their cars for filming. The payment isn’t always cash: Craig wrangled several ‘38 Plymouths for Lonely Hearts from a North Carolina dealer by promising to tune the cars up.
“They get the cars back in better shape than they gave them to me,” said Craig. “It works out for everybody.”
Finding cars with a 60-year-old pedigree that still start when cranked can be a challenge and “Lonely Hearts” has been one of Craig’s most challenging movies. He had to supply about 45 cars from the post-World War II era that would not only run but look good on camera.
“This is the first time I’ve worked on a movie that used all vintage cars,” he said.
Those cars can pose a particular challenge to transport due to their weight. The ‘41 Cadillac which Craig unloaded from his truck was built in the days before fiberglass and lightweight metals.
All that iron and steel can push Craig’s modern day equipment to the limit. Just a day before filming was to begin, a 1940s-era limousine the size of a small bus buckled the flatbed on Craig’s truck.
But Craig said the hard work and scrambling repair jobs are worth it when he sees the classic cars lined up along Forsyth Street. Just by parking them at the meters across from the Florida Theater, Craig helped turn downtown Jacksonville into a movie set.