When "The Cobbler" is released, Jim McFarland of Lakeland will have no trouble relating to the main character, played by Adam Sandler. That's in part because McFarland had an indirect role in shaping Sandler's character.
McFarland, a third-generation shoe repairman, or cobbler, served as an informal adviser for the movie's production team during preparations for shooting last year. And he contributed props — most notably, photos of himself and his father and grandfather — that production designers incorporated into the ersatz shoe repair shop they manufactured for filming in New York City.
The production team mounted a picture of McFarland and his late father, Jim McFarland Sr., behind the cash register in the shop.
"Whenever he's standing at the cash register, you get a good look at me and my dad," McFarland said.
The movie, a fantasy-drama also starring Dustin Hoffman, Steve Buscemi and Ellen Barkin, is likely to be released in late 2014 or early 2015.
So how did a cobbler in Lakeland wind up contributing to the making of "The Cobbler" in New York? Short answer: Google and connections.
An Internet search led the producers to Lee Efronson, owner of the Miami Leather Company and an associate of McFarland's. As the team quizzed the man about the shoe repair trade, he suggested they get in touch with McFarland, who serves on the board of directors of the Shoe Service Institute of America.
McFarland said the production team found his website, which features pictures of his late father and grandfather with the label, "a family trade since 1918." He said filmmakers called him last summer to gather information about his business and the shoe repair industry.
McFarland said he signed releases giving the filmmakers permission to use material from his shop, including the photo of his grandfather, Lewis McFarland, taken in 1925 at his shop in Hamilton, Ohio. Jim McFarland never met his grandfather, who died when he was an infant.
The production team flew McFarland to New York as they were constructing the set on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He said they mentioned a video on his website describing the history of the family business.
"They were like, 'We watched your bio, and if we wouldn't have seen the date you posted it we would have thought you stole half our script,'" McFarland said.
That comment made sense after McFarland read a synopsis of the script. He said Sandler's character resents being pressured into continuing the family business and regrets missing out on other opportunities.
ECHOES IN PLOT
McFarland similarly had dreams of doing something besides being a cobbler. He enrolled in college with hopes of becoming a high school football coach but left school to help run the family business when his father became ill. Jim McFarland Sr. died a year later, in 1987.
"I got robbed out of my chance go to college," McFarland said. "I had a bad attitude. He's (Sandler) the same in the movie. ... He's like me, like a lot of shoe cobblers in our trade."
The photo of McFarland and his father used on the film set was taken two days before the elder McFarland died.
Jim McFarland Sr. moved his business from St. Petersburg to Lakeland in 1967 at the urging of the late Joe Blanton, then president of Publix Super Markets. The original Lakeland shop was at the just-opened Searstown shopping center on Memorial Boulevard. McFarland moved to his current location in the Lakeland South Shopping Center in 1981.
In "The Cobbler," Sandler's character comes to appreciate his life through a fantasy device: He discovers that when he steps into the shoes of his customers he can experience their lives, for good and bad. McFarland, for his part, has simply embraced his role as perpetuator of a family tradition.
American shoe-repair shops have declined from 120,000 in the 1930s to about 600 today, McFarland said. More than half of the remaining shops are multi-generational family businesses, he said.
During a tour of his store's workshop, McFarland gripped a century-old tack hammer previously wielded by his grandfather. The workshop also contains a Landis Model 88 stitching machine from 1963.
McFarland said in his meeting with the filmmakers, one of them took numerous photos of his hands. He said the team considered using him as a hand model for Sandler's character but eventually hired a cobbler based in New York.
OPENING DOORS
One of McFarland's main contacts on the movie was Wendy Cohen, who was hired to procure products for use on the sets. Cohen, who has worked on dozens of films, said McFarland was a valuable resource.
"The minute I contacted him, every door opened up," Cohen said. "It was amazing, and he was incredibly helpful and a super nice man. He really just knows so much about his field and the history of his field and who's involved and who makes what. ... If you can find a Jim on every movie, it's a gift."
Cohen said the production team incorporated the photo of McFarland's grandfather into the set, hanging it on a wall to represent an ancestor of Sandler's character. McFarland also gave the filmmakers a poster identical to one on display in his shop that promotes Rendenbach, a German leather manufacturer, with the phrase, "The soul of a shoe."
"It's fun to have pieces of history as opposed to fabricating pieces that our department makes," Cohen said. "Pretty much everything Jim provided to us was incorporated."
McFarland said his industry is seeking a resurgence by emphasizing its "green" appeal for younger Americans. Having shoes repaired, McFarland said, is better than throwing them away and buying new ones.
He hopes "The Cobbler" will provide a further boost. The Shoe Service Institute of America has hired Karyn Barker, a Lakeland-based marketing specialist, to raise its profile, and McFarland said the association plans to use its connection to the movie in a marketing campaign.
McFarland is already taking advantage of his connection to the movie. Customers now see the photo of McFarland's grandfather with an addition: the signatures of Sandler, Hoffman and Buscemi.
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