Two Great Bend residents have film credits in the 2025 movie “Sinners,” which has been nominated for a record 16 Academy Awards.

Jim Dunlap worked in movie production finance for 35 years before retiring and moving to Great Bend about a year and a half ago to be near his parents. Dunlap later got to know that Kaleb Babcock from Great Bend was interested in the industry and helped him secure a job working in the accounting department for “Sinners” in New Orleans.

“I was an accounting clerk,” Babcock said. His office was the first point of contact for vendors.

He had the opportunity to deliver a paycheck to one of the actors, along with a movie prop, and he visited a street that the film crew transformed into a scene from the 1930s.

“Sinners,” starring Michael B. Jordan as twin brothers “Smoke” and “Stack,” is set in that decade. Internet Movie Database (IMDB.com) described the R-rated movie this way: “Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back.”

IMDB lists several genres for this movie, written and directed by Ryan Coogler: Folk horror, period drama, vampire horror, action and drama. It also stars Jack O’Connell and Hailee Steinfeld.

Babcock and Dunlap have their own IMDB pages. For Babcock, his only other credit to date is for an animated short titled, “Don’t Feed.”

Dunlap has 56 credits on the website. He said his career started in Kansas, after he graduated from Hutchinson High School. In the summer of 1984 he was the news director at KWHK radio in Hutchinson when he learned that a movie production crew was coming to McPherson. He called Warner Brothers, and in those days it was possible to get through to a human, he recalls. He learned that the accountant needed a clerk and he talked his way into a job. To prove how much we wanted the job and how hard he was willing to work, Dunlap drove to St. Louis to meet with the person who hired him.

After the production crew’s brief stay in Kansas, he stayed with the crew as it went to other locations. The movie was “American Flyer,” starring Kevin Costner.

Dunlap would work with another Kansas film crew when “Kansas” starring Matt Damon was filmed in 1987. After that, he moved to Los Angeles.

“Sinners” was his final movie before retiring to Great Bend. It was also his second Warner Brothers movie, the first being “American Flyer.”

Babcock said he’s still interested in animation and would like to work in a movie’s art department or on set design. Working in the accounting department is a way to get his foot in the door, but he and Dunlap agreed it’s not an easy industry to get into.

Babcock flew to Canada to watch the movie on opening day with his fiancee and see his name in the credits.

“I didn’t expect the Oscar thing,” he said of the record number of nominations for Academy Awards. Until this year, the most nominations any movie had received was 14.

Dunlap said he got up at 5:30 a.m. on Jan. 22 to hear the nominees for the 98th Academy Awards.

The movie came out in April and Dunlap says, “It is one of the best movies I ever did.”

Shot on film for IMAX, the movie is visually stunning, he added. “It looks really beautiful.”