Finally Rolling Again on ‘America in Miniature’ – My Debut Documentary Film

A (feature?) documentary about Roadside America – a new-defunct one-of-a-kind roadside attraction here in PA. When I first began producing this film, I had a very simple “story” I planned the film to follow – a happy spotlight on the world’s greatest miniature village filled with staff interviews and a warning of what could be lost if the business shuttered. That was probably around 2018-19. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and the business was shuttered.

Naturally, my direction for the film was lost. The story I had planned to tell was suddenly no longer relevant and, quite frankly, I was in mourning a bit as a former employee of the attraction but more so as a lifelong lover of the attraction. The haze settled in the following years, but I became ridiculously busy with my new endeavors.

Truth be told, I still am unnecessarily busy, but very recently I had a bit of a “eureka” kind of moment. Imagine the scene from David Fincher’s 2010 best picture nominee The Social Network (essential watching, if I could make a recommendation) where Mark realizes what The Facebook is missing is the “relationship status” function – and then proceeds to sprint through the Massachusetts winter in shorts and flip flops back to his dorm to finish the site.

I always knew that I would eventually return to complete the film, but not until I knew for sure how the story would end. I realized very recently that there is only one fitting third act – a reflection on the closure of the attraction. Not sure I would be able to secure any additional interviews now that the business is defunct, I looked into local news sources which – luckily for me – did a thorough job of covering and at times sensationalizing the iconic local business’s untimely demise. I would even say some of them went as far as to wax poetic about its demise – spotlighting all of the frustrating elements included in the closure such as the unceremonious auctioning of priceless pieces of the display.

And so, my documentary now has an ending. The only thing left is for me to find time to sit down and put it all together. I started the process this past weekend, laying out the crude structure of the third act. I now have to return to act one and two to make them better align with the final sentiment and voila!

Easier said than done, me finding time.