Writing Credit

62 pages. 29,018 words. 151,828 characters.

Is that a script? The first few chapters of a novel? All of the tweets I’ve ever posted?

Nope. It’s the transcript for the 23 interviews shot (so far) for Parkway of Broken Dreams.

And that’s not even the full transcript. That’s just the time-coded highlights from the interviews that are relevant to the film’s story. A full transcript of every interview would probably be double, if not quadruple that amount.

Maybe that’s why it’s mid-April, and we’re just getting done the part that we projected would be done in mid-January. To be fair, we also shot a bunch more interviews over the months in between. And we have been doing a lot of other behind-the-scenes stuff unrelated to what you’ll see on screen. Like getting a crash course in the legal ins and outs of documentary filmmaking. And setting up a production company to take over the legal and financial reins of this here film. (And trying to keep those finances from flying out the door in the process!)

And then there’s the other stuff that hopefully you will see on screen, aside from the interviews, like acquiring more archival footage, scanning donated still photos and artifacts, and, yes, setting up even more potential filming, even though we’re getting really close to capping off the “production” phase of this journey. (Documentary filmmaking isn’t quite as cut and dry as churning out scripted works that have actual planned and scheduled production stages.)

All that said, even though this isn’t technically a scripted film, wouldn’t you know that I’m writing a script anyway? Or, at least, “assembling” a script, taking all those nifty snippets from the 62-page transcript and putting them together into narrative format. Almost like writing an oral history. Weird, it feels like I’ve done this before…

So, yeah, now I have to finish “writing” this script (effectively, the “narrative map” I mentioned a few months ago), which will make the actual editing of all that footage go much quicker (fingers crossed). In between that and all the time-consuming legal stuff (we have a LOT of release forms and licensing agreements to get out; anyone who wants to help with that and other administrative duties, let us know), we’re going to try to keep you updated as much as possible and continue to whet your whistle on Facebook and Instagram with occasional behind-the-scenes photos and short vignettes, like this one:

And maybe I’ll find time to dig through my garage and find the box of flyers that will finally fulfill some of the incentive packages owed to our generous financial backers (they’re coming, kids, we haven’t forgotten about you!).