In 2008, my friend Bill Coughlan called and asked if I would like to participate in the 48 Hour Film Festival. If you were too exhausted to click on that link, let me spell it out for you: The 48 Hour Film Festival is a sort of cinematic competition wherein teams are tasked with producing a short film in (guess!) 48 hours, from concept to finished, edited production. Each team draws a random series of components that have to be incorporated into the final film, as well as a genre.
In 2007, Bill had worked with my friend Robin Brande and he enjoyed the experience of having a novelist produce the film’s screenplay. So he asked me to step in for 2008, and it sounded like fun, so I did.
On a Friday afternoon, Bill called on his way home from the drawing. The genre was road trip. The three elements I had to incorporate into my script were:
- a person named Larry Gardner
- a dipping sauce of some sort
- the line of dialogue, “You’ll miss him when he’s gone.”
Bill and I fired back and forth a few different ideas, most of which were pretty cool, but completely impractical on a 48-hour shoot. Eventually, we settled on the concept that became All Roads Lead Away. You can watch the trailer below. If you want to watch the entire movie, you’ll need to click here. (Certain SAG rules prohibit me showing the entire film on my site, but you can watch it on Bill’s. Sadly, you will also need Flash installed to watch the movie.)
