Nearly a month since our last post here, and it’s not because nothing’s happening …
Our “silence” here has been entirely because I’m the only one writing posts for this web site and I was suddenly laid low by the need for some minor surgery. The surgery was fine — it was the recovery that kept me out of the game for much longer than I would have liked. But I’m fine now and eager to get back to work, here on this website and on the script for the miniseries.
The good news is that while I was incapacitated, Mike Edwards, Josh Fronduti, and Joel Hammers were in upstate New York, recording new interviews with Matt Rozell and many members of his family. They were also able to record interviews with colleagues and former students from Matt’s classes, all of whom spoke with enthusiasm about how the “living history” project and the reunions changed their lives forever and for the better.
A lot of this excursion was about collecting “back story” for Matt, since he is very much a character in this whole saga, one we want the audience to get to know and to understand. Being in his home town and at the school where so much of the later parts of the story took place, Mike and his team had access to images and sounds from the start of Matt’s career and of the larger community.
That community is practically a character in itself. Hudson Falls is a village of 7,000 people and has been for decades. Some folks feel like nothing ever changes there, nothing “happens.” But the people who live there love it, and most couldn’t dream of being anywhere else. They may leave, but they soon return. So a big part of this visit was about capturing the essence of the place where Matt and his students first interviewed the WWII vets in their community, where they all first learned about the train near Magdeburg, and where most of the reunions of “liberators and liberated” were held.
Hudson Falls, New York.
Screenshot from drone footage.
During the War the “Falls” region was held up as an example of typical home-front life, of the Real America for which our soldiers and sailors were fighting. LOOK magazine did a series of articles about Glens Falls and Hudson Falls in 1944, and our team came back with photos of all of that.
This LOOK cover was typical of the treatment: this is “Hometown, U.S.A.”
This is what you’re fighting for, fellas. Lovely wife and beautiful child. They’re counting on you and praying for this to all be over soon so you can come home to them.
Speaking of beautiful images, here’s Matt and Laura on their wedding day…
