Chances are, there is a drawer somewhere in your house with the moniker, “junk drawer.” It is probably filled with everything you haven’t taken the time to throw away: long-forgotten birthday cards, expired pizza coupons, pens that don’t write, dead batteries, dog-eared phone books, and much, much more. However one junk drawer in the Great River Region is uniquely different.
Root through the junk drawer at SCC alumni Kenny and Suzie (Stein) Gorrell’s house in Donnellson, IA and you’re in for a few surprises.
“I think I have a signed glossy photo of Mel Gibson somewhere in this drawer. Yup, here it is.” Instantly, Suzie emerges with a signed, glossy photo of Mel Gibson that reads, “Kenny, Best wishes. Mel.”
“I’ve got more stuff down in the basement,” Suzie adds.
In a flash, she returns with a box of photos of Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Russell Crowe, Cindy Crawford, Keith Richards, John Wayne, even 90’s rapper, M.C. Hammer – all personally bestowing upon Kenny best wishes or thanks.
Suzie apologizes, “I know, you’d think we’d put all this stuff in frames or something.”
Whereas most people might nab the occasional pen or coffee mug from work, Kenny Gorrell bags autographed photos of Hollywood’s leading actors and discarded props from the sets of blockbuster movies. That’s because Kenny makes a living as a mechanical special effects artist. His resume reads like a video store top 100 movies of all-time list: Pirates of the Caribbean, the Transformers, the Waterboy, the Patriot, and Forrest Gump. With almost 20 years in the business and over 50 films and TV shows to his credit, he’s made a name for himself.
Then, during an ah-hah moment, Suzie exclaims, “Oh, do you want to see Kenny’s Emmy statue?”
In September Kenny won an Emmy award for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for his work on the HBO miniseries, John Adams, Join or Die. The nominated segment involves the reenactment of snowy conditions faced by Adams and other soldiers during the Revolutionary War. It features acres and acres of land covered with artificial snow, iced-over wagons, horses, and cannon, and dozens of frozen, dead soldiers.
“The phone rings a lot more now that he won an Emmy,” Susie laughs.
Kenny’s story would make Horatio Alger jealous.
“When he first started, he was parking cars at Disney World,” Suzie says. “But he’s just so persistent. He kept asking, talking, making contacts, networking. He never took no for an answer”
Kenny and Suzie attended SCC’s Keokuk campus before their move to Florida. She admits, “he might have fibbed a little about his classes at SCC. You offered classes in mechanical special effects, didn’t you?”
His persistence paid off and Kenny soon became a liaison for visiting actors which then led to a job in the Disney animation studios serving as a runner, shuttling drawings between the staff of illustrators.
“He even managed to land a job as an animator but when they found out he couldn’t draw, he had take a different job,” jokes Suzie.
Not long after that, a producer gave him a job sweeping warehouses on a movie lot. Suzie says that producer gave Kenny a bit of advice that would set the tone for his career.
“I’ll never forget what he told Kenny. He said, ‘I got you in the door, it’s up to you to make something of it.’”
