The Idea

When Jason came to me with his idea for what would become The Trial of Margaret Stone, he had two requests: It needed to take place in the old Berryville Courthouse (now the historical society) and it needed to be a mix of 12 Angry Men & The Exorcist.

From that, the two of us worked to create a basic idea. What if the plot was set in the 1890s? What if it had the makings of a morality tale? These were questions that we put to ourselves as we designed what would become the fully-formed idea.

When we thought about it, Margaret was a contemporary of another murderous young woman named Lizzie Borden. Borden was accused of killing her parents with an axe in 1892 at (let's be specific) 92 Second Street, Fall River, MA. Lizzie was vilified and people have questioned both her motives and her actions ever since.

But what if there was more to the story? What if it wasn't a bustling east coast city but rather a midwestern small town that was just finding its feet? That was why we decided that not only would we film in Berryville, AR, but we'd set the story there as well.

Berryville is an interesting place. It's one of those towns that seems nestled in a location. To get there you need to take some seriously winding roads, pass through places that more people know about like Eureka Springs, and then you come around a corner and there's the town square. You can feel the history.

So why not give them a little extra history? Why not nestle our own story within the history of the town? So that's what we're doing. Jason and I are creating historical fiction and putting our prints all over a very real town.