VBT couple take part in two separate movies of local interest

By Don Sherman
Van Buren Township
Cheryl Sherman has resided in Michigan her entire life. For 37 years she’s been happily married to Don Sherman. What’s more remarkable about this Van Buren Township couple? Both Shermans have enjoyed major motion picture roles.
Cheryl’s film – “1969: Killers, Freaks, and Radicals” — premiered Jan. 25 at Royal Oak’s Emagine Theater. Additional local showings will follow in advance of a hoped-for nationwide release.
“1969: KFP” is a documentary covering the exploits of John Norman Collins, aka the Michigan Murderer. In 1970, he was arrested, tried, and convicted of killing 18-year-old Eastern Michigan University student Karen Sue Beineman. Although Collins is suspected of six additional Michigan and California killings, his sole conviction was quite enough to put him away for life. The vile predator is currently enjoying solitary confinement at the G. Robert Cotton state prison in Jackson.
A close friend of Cheryl’s worked with “1969: KFP” producer Andrew Templeton at Hagerty Publications in Ann Arbor. This film maker, who has been intrigued by the Michigan Murderer for decades, used Kickstarter to raise more than $1.5-million to fund his project. During a watercooler conversation, Cheryl’s friend informed Templeton that she knew of a potential thespian for his documentary.
Cheryl grew up in Ypsilanti only a block from the gas station where Collins worked on his Triumph motorcycles. One day in 1968, while walking down Ecorse Avenue, Collins slowed his bike to offer Cheryl a lift. As it turns out, that was his modus operandi. This friendly, petite, brown-haired, 18-year-old femme fatale fit Collins’s carnal desires to a T.
Cheryl wisely replied “no, thanks” to Collins’s offer. Later, while attending EMU, she lived in an apartment not far from where this creep and his fraternity brothers hung out. Thankfully, she suffered no additional Collins contact.
In 2019, Templeton visited the Shermans’ home for a couple of hours to interview and film Cheryl. She shared her late-‘60s knowledge gained from personal experience and the detailed newspaper, television, and radio coverage of Collins’s exploits. The resulting documentary presents this attractive, well-spoken Sherman in half-a-dozen moments of dialogue.
Don Sherman studied engineering at the University of Michigan prior to commencing his automotive journalism career in 1971. In 1981, while employed by Car and Driver magazine, he enjoyed a flight aboard the Concorde SST to England with John Z. DeLorean to participate in the launch of his DMC-12 sports car.
Skinned in stainless steel and adorned with gull-wing doors, this two-seater was a mixed bag of great and evil. It lacked power and speed, suffered from quality issues, and never quite lived up to the hopes of the man who once headed GM’s Pontiac division, during which he personally rammed the remarkable GTO through the world’s most stilted bureaucracy.
Unfortunately, DeLorean’s state-backed manufacturing plant in Northern Ireland went bust after producing only 9,000 vehicles. In pursuit of the millions of pound sterling he needed to stay in business, DeLorean fell victim to a cocaine distribution scheme. His attorney pleaded “government entrapment” and this independent manufacturer beat that rap in court.
In 1985, a DeLorean DMC-12 starred in the “Back to the Future” movie with Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd, insuring the car’s immortality. In 2005, John Z. died of a stroke at 80 years of age.
Enter Tamir Ardon, an unrelenting DeLorean historian and a corporate director at XYZ films. His 2019 venture was the movie “Framing John Delorean,” called “the first documentary, re-enactment, and true story of the man behind the car.” Actor Alec Baldwin stood in for the deceased John DeLorean. Notable footage included Ronald and Nancy Reagan, United Kingdom prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Walters, Phil Donohue, and Tom Brokaw. Don Sherman played himself — a journalist lucky to be along for the DeLorean ride.
This film’s title has a double meaning. The primary connotation was the life and times of one of the auto industry’s most creative forces. The second meaning referred to how the hapless DeLorean suffered government entrapment via criminal investors.
Well preserved DeLorean DMC-12s now bring up to $100,000, four times their original price.
If you can’t live without seeing Don Sherman on screen, “Framing John Delorean” is available for rent for $4.09 via Prime Video or via DVD from Amazon for $15.