note:

Just so everyone knows - at some point tonight our hosting service is going to change hands, I've backed up all the files and I'm ready for the worst. Wish us luck.

Update: It's done... and it was surprisingly easy.

slightly mad

Not "mad" as in angry, but "mad" as in crazy, loony, edgy, mentally ill, certifiable... I'm going through camera withdrawals, and the worst of it, is I have an old Samsung miniDV paper-weight sitting on my desk in front of me... a constant reminder. In it's defense, it's not a complete paper-weight, although it mysteriously doesn't record anymore - it does still import footage.

What's the delay? Why am I not at the store this very moment getting my fix with a new camera? I'm waiting for my tax return money to come in the mail, while at the same time, trying to sell off my old eMac. When these two things happen... well, maybe just the first one, I'm immediately buying a HDR-HC1.

Aside from that - I wanted to warn readers that the site might go through some growing pains the next few days, our host, Get Me Online, is closing it's doors - and we are preparing to shove everything over onto a .mac account. We'll see how that goes.

If you haven't already, go to Participatory Culture and download their brand-spanking-new Democracy player and then subscribe to the 'Four Eyed Monsters' video podcast. Or, if you're lazy, just visit their website. FEM is my replacement addiction.

101 days left

Well, I didn't get to this post by Monday like I had hoped - but this week has flown by. A few quick thoughts:

For the last few months, each post has been titled "x days left", and ever since the meeting with Matt, I've been wondering what exactly I'm still counting down to. As I mentioned in my last post, it's very likely we'll move forward with a pilot if and before anything else. And there is very little reason to wait 'till the end of May to do so.

Also, it's very possible, that if the pilot is shot in the very start of May, or, if the weather is right, in mid-April, that a network could pick up the show and still want it done this July & August. So, what is 101 days away? Who knows.


Hopefully, I'll be meeting with Matt again this weekend, although unfortunately, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow afternoon - I hope that doesn't get in the way. But the pilot, at this point, has only one thing left that it needs: people to ride. The small crew is mostly taken care of, the equipment is fully taken care of, etc, but we still need the right kind of cast to appeal to, well, who ever we prefer to buy it.

I'm leaning towards the idea of getting Tim, who I went on my first bike trip in 2001 with, to fly out from Hawaii for the pilot. And having the cast be made up of: Tim, Amanda, myself, and Amber (Amanda's step sister who lives here in L.A., and is an actress). I would have to sell Matt on this idea, but here are my thoughts for the rest of you reading.


[Tim and I at the Santa Monica Pier last year on a rare grey and overcast day...]

I mentioned before, I don't have much interest in directing 'Pedal' and, at the same time, being part of the main cast, i.e., biking 90+ miles a day. But, this pilot could be an opportunity to see if it's not as overwhelming as I'm assuming with a crew there. I might find it works out better - I might find out I was right and decide to stay behind the camera. Either way - the four of us would make a great personality on camera for the pilot.

Amanda and I, of course, have done something like this before, we get along great, even in stressful and exhausting situations - with a few understandable exceptions. But, most people assumed our Pacific ride would break us apart - when it had the opposite effect. Tim and I have gone through a lot together, our first trip was much longer than Amanda and my's, it lasted 55 days and totaled around 4,000 miles. Tim and Amber unfortunately have never met, but both are extremely friendly and outgoing and, I'm sure, would get along great for the week long adventure.

Am I getting ahead of myself? I did explain before that the pilot would be a week long trip filmed in a way to look like the first few days of a coast to coast ride, didn't I? Well, if not, there you go - I hope I'm making sense.

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.

112 days left

I know I've been a bit secretive these last few weeks - especially since our meeting with Matt over a month ago.

For some of the secrecy - I have good reason... but I've decided that, since the project is nearing it's "100 days left" mark, I need to be more open about the events unfolding behind the scenes, or else, what's the point of this site?

At the moment, I don't have time to dive into the details - unfortunately, I'm about to leave for work - but within the next few days, no later than this friday, I'm going to start explaining exactly where 'Pedal' stands at the moment, and where it might head in the near future. It's all very exciting.