The Concord Insider had a nice piece about my project in this week’s issue, even giving some props to my mad rhyme-spitting abilities, which go overlooked much too often. I did want to point out something important in the article, though:
The telling of the stories has changed a bit for Carlson, who is considering abandoning an earlier quest to include a video element in the project. He was hoping to make something of a web series out of his visits but quickly encountered logistical problems – that a dude visiting an historic site is just a dude, until that dude has a video camera.“You go with a video camera and all of a sudden it’s a completely different scenario,” Carlson said, noting that it costs a lot of money to film in some sites while others don’t allow it at all. “It’s a much more fraught relationship.”
This is the one piece of the TV puzzle that I didn’t account for when I launched the Kickstarter – and in between bouts of smacking my head against large wooden surfaces, I’ve been trying to put it back into place, with limited success – in fact, I have not been able to get permission to film at any of the gravesites in the DC area.
So… I’m afraid the TV portion of this project is going to go on hold, at least until the Travel Channel or somebody gets wind of the idea and decides to spring for it. One dude with a video camera is a hard sell for locations – “I’d like to come and get in your way for a day, and I also have no money to give you” – I mean, yeah. Besides, the networks have producers that can deal with all that stuff while I spit mad rhymes.
But while the video piece is on hold, the project as a whole is still going forward. I’m going to Washington on Tuesday and I’ve got a lot of good stuff in the works, video camera or not. The blog and the book are still going to happen, and they’re both going to be amazing. Probably a little creepy and morbid, too, but amazing.
Sure, I’m a little disappointed, but hey, it’s not like anyone died – or, rather, it’s not like anyone died who wasn’t already dead and the focus of the project. And a huge, huge thank you to each of you who got me so close to hitting the Kickstarter goal – it’s been such a thrill to have you all on board, and believe me, you’ll get the stories you were after when you backed the project!
And, with that, I have some planning to do…
