After Cold Winter, I was burnt out.  I took a year off and did pretty much nothing.  Then, I decided that I couldn’t do any more with any less than I did with Cold Winter.  I made a WWII full length film for less than $1000.  It was time to start writing beyond my means.

So, I did.  Over the course of 2007 thru 2010, I worked on a number of ideas and wrote a number of scripts, but also dropped a few along the way.

Here’s a few:

Ashio – Ashio is a samurai film.  Set in Japan in 1885, nearly 20 years after
industrialization began to take hold, and nearly 20 years after the disbanding of the
samurai. The copper mine at Ashio brought floods of acid rain, and polluted rivers,
ruining the farmlands in the valley below.

A small group of angry farmers, who have lost their lands, take up arms against the
mine. Retired Samurai, Mishichige Shohei, and his toddler grandson bear witness to
the attack and are subsequently pulled into the rings of violence. His family
slaughtered, Shohei must give up his quiet life and take up the sword, in a new world of rifles and machines.

With the help of a local priest, an old nemesis outlaw, a pregnant peasant girl, and a
giant American slave, Shohei is set on a path of enlightenment that brings him face to
face with old friends and enemies as martial law is set in place to restore order to the
uprising.

The screenplay is an ensemble piece with many characters each with their own conflicts and struggles and mirrors true to life incidents, while touching on the actual conflicts between industrialization the agrarian life surrounding the Ashio mountains at the dawn of the 20th century.

Galaxie – Previously known as “Under My Wheels” – is a racing movie set in 1970s during the gas crisis where drivers would race for tanks of gas instead of money.

Milo is a honors physics student with a full scholarship to Berkeley.  The problem is that he lives across the country in the deep south with very back woods parents who don’t believe in him and a number of fathers who come in and out of his life.  In order to escape, he begins to build a car to drive him out of town and off to his future.  Along the way he falls into racing to get him the money and the gas to get him from one part of the country to the other.

Family Trees – Based on a true story, Family Trees tells the tale of a large family in pre WWII Northern New York who are forcibly relocated off from their land as the US Government stepped in to build a military base on their land.  It is a deep character based film that treads on tragedy while holding on to family honor.