109 days left

I'm not sure where to start - I should forewarn you that the following is very likely to be on the lengthy side. I'm going to do my best to bridge the gap between what readers of this blog know, and what is happening behind the scenes of 'Pedal'. Here we go:


At the moment, a total stranger coming to this site for the first time would probably leave assuming: 'Pedal' is a documentary following three travelers as they ride over 3,600 miles from the Pacific coast, outside of Olympic National Park, and then east, just below the Canadian border, towards Bar Harbor, Maine as they cross paths with other travelers from all over the world. Why? Because that's what it still reads in the synopsis. They would also probably assume that the main riders, mentioned above, are Amanda, Nick, and myself. Because... I've never mentioned otherwise.


Let's go back to Jan 10th of this year, the morning Amanda & I met with Matt, the producer, at Universal - going into the meeting I had dropped a bombshell on Matt in an email: I was no longer planning on riding, nor was Amanda and Nick. I was concentrating all of my energy behind the camera. This meant that we were looking for a group of riders to follow on their coast to coast adventure. This "bombshell" wasn't exactly what he was expecting, nor was he excited to hear it... especially on such short notice.

What brought me to this decision? About seven months of debating - and this point, which I wrote in my email to Matt, here's a [somewhat] cut & paste:

One of the points I wanted to stress the most in our conversation was: the "original plan" (the film following us) was born out of very low-expectations.

To explain: Amanda, Nick and myself were planning on, in 2003, doing a coast to coast bike ride. Amanda suggested I use this experience to make my first film. My friend at the time, Chuck (who had been with me on my first bike trip in 2001, but injured his knee three days into it and had to go home), knew he couldn't ride with us (because of problems he still had with his knee), but he wanted to be there in anyway he could - planned on following us and filming along the way armed with just a GL2 and a moped.

[We planned] to make a documentary out of it... just a one man crew... I had always wanted to make a film about the subject ever since my first ride - but I had not planned on doing it at this time or in this way.

But we slowly moved ahead with the plans all the same... until Chuck later lost interest. Long story short - I began the website and the project began to take leaps and bounds in it's potential, the crew came forward, you contacted me, many other things, but the entire time, I held onto the "original plan" (the idea of following Amanda and myself). When I had every opportunity and every reason to mold it into something [more].

Later, at the meeting, Matt sold me on an idea that was very, very different in it's approach to the story. Matt wasn't / isn't interested in putting up the 8 grand for a feature length documentary... in particular, one that isn't geared at a main stream audience. What Matt proposed was cutting the coast to coast experience into a 6 or 7 hour long piece, and dividing that up into half-hour or hour-long episodes to sell to [a cable television network].

So on the table now I had, at one end, an $8,000 artsy, slow, personal piece that I would spend a year cutting in my Dad's basement, and then another year shopping it at every indie-film festival I could come across... all while trying desperately to pay back the friends and family members who put up the financial support. Would it have been a difficult and trying two years? Yes. Would it have been worth it? Yes.

At the other end of this metaphoric table: a fully funded - $25,000 to $50,000 - documentary, with a full crew (still with the indispensable help of the Black Sheep), an RV with an editing bay inside, a handful of HD camcorders, a decent sized crane, a few helicopter aerial shots, etc... on top of all this, there would be very little chance the project wouldn't get picked up...

After the meeting, several friends gave me their opinions and said it was an amazing start... not even "start", but just an amazing opportunity in general. I still, for what ever reason, hadn't made the full commitment just yet. Then my friend, Eric, said exactly what I needed to hear: "how can you not?".


I have a whole lifetime ahead of me to focus on more artistic and personal projects - I've been given an incredible opportunity to work on a project in a way that I could have spent 10 years fighting to get.


At this moment, five weeks later, the full scale production is on hold, Matt is leaning towards shooting a pilot that we can shop around first. Basically find a group of people and go on a week long bike trip, pretending the whole time that this is simply the first few days of an actual coast to coast trip. Leaving a huge cliff hanger at the end of the episode.

And that's it. That's where the project stands, it's come a long, long ways since that night, three years ago, in Amanda and my's small 400 square foot house behind Michigan Ave in Ypsilanti, Michigan, when we (Amanda, myself and Chuck) first half-seriously discussed the idea of filming our upcoming bike ride.


I feel as though I'm forgetting to mention so much - but seeing as how it's 2 in the morning and I haven't eaten in 8 hours... I doubt I'm going to remember much at the moment. I'm just sitting here trying to keep my eyes open while listening to my stomach growl. But I have the next two days off - so if there are any other details I think of... or if any of you have questions or comments, I'll probably be following this post up before Monday night. Goodnight.