Beg. Borrow. Oar steel.

Brad Melby needed a little of each to get through college and turn his life around.

Now, 20 years later, he's producing a movie about his personal renaissance that will be directed by an Oscar nominee and shot partially in Bismarck. Melby and fellow producer John Carroll Lynch - who was in the Coen brothers' "Fargo" - were in town Thursday afternoon to scout possible shooting locations.

The film, "Remember Minnesota," is scheduled to begin production next spring. It could be in theaters by 2009.

Lynch co-wrote the screenplay for the film, which is based on Melby's transformation from slacker (begging for free food at a diner, borrowing money for school) to hero in the oddest of places for a Midwesterner: on the water.

The movie will tell the true story of Melby's freshman year at the University of Minnesota, when - largely because he was chasing a girl - he gave up smoking pot and sold his Camaro to join the school's rowing team. Yes - rowing, on the chilly Mississippi.

In 1987, the club team at Minnesota was several boat-lengths apart from the monied, traditional crew powerhouses in the Ivy League. The Gophers had to pay to take part, and stored their equipment in a rusty, corrugated tin maintenance shed on the bank of the river.

But there was something in the water that year. Through determination, luck and a lot of not knowing any better, Melby's 1987 crew team swamped the competition at the country's biggest intercollegiate rowing event. From out of nowhere, Minnesota became a rowing power.

And Melby went from shiftless to shifting to a higher gear.

"Ithink crew helped him a lot," his father, Bismarck's Rod Melby, said Thursday. "It gave him direction, motivation, something to work toward. He became a team player. He's got a lot of direction now, there's no doubt."

After college, Melby became a financial planner for American Express. One of his clients, who was dating Lynch, noticed an oar blade mounted on the wall of his office. She asked him about it, then relayed the story to her beau.

"Brad told me the story, and the minute Iheard it I knew it would be a great movie,"Lynch said Thursday.

Several years passed before Lynch would team up with Los Angeles writer Tess Clark to complete the screenplay. They finished it about a year and a half ago, and the two of them and Melby are raising money to get the picture made. Lynch figured the film would cost about $8 million to produce.

Mikael Salomon has signed on to direct "Remember Minnesota." Salomon won an Emmy for directing HBO's "A Band of Brothers," and is a two-time Academy Award nominee for cinematography ("The Abyss,""Backdraft").

Melby said the producers hoped to secure the remainder of the financing soon, and the goal is to begin casting in December or January. Lynch will play Melby's dad.

Melby worked with Lynch and Clark on the screenplay, to make it as accurate a portrayal of events as possible. The biggest change, he said, was that his freshman and sophomore seasons were condensed into one year to tell the story. But a teammate on that unlikely championship team has read the script and nodded his approval.

"He said (the writers) captured the soul of all that happened, and that was the most important thing to me," Melby said.

Melby and Lynch spent part of Thursday scouting possible shooting locations in Melby's old neighborhood, at Century High School and at Bismarck landmarks.

Lynch said they hoped to shoot the movie in as many of the actual locations in the screenplay as possible. That authenticity, he said, is what gives good sports movies their appeal. The combination of sport and the uplifting story will make "Remember Minnesota" very marketable, Lynch said.

"And it won't hurt that rowers are some of the most beautiful people on the planet," he said. "In rowing there's a tradition that the losing team gives their jerseys to the winners, so we'll have all these people in peak physical condition ripping their shirts off."

(Reach reporter Tony Spilde at 250-8260 or tony.spilde@;bismarcktribune.com.)