After a few years, your own work might surprise you.

So on Saturday night we held a Zoom screening of my film, WE PEDAL UPHILL, a tapestry of 13 filmed stories (each in a different U.S. state).  It had been a couple years at least since I'd watched the film and I'm glad I did. I learned a lot (again) about the power of the unconscious creative brain.

I noticed a bunch of recurring images or themes or details that I  don't recall thinking about consciously when we began shooting in early 2005. That was the beginning of the second 4-year term of the George W. Bush administration. Some of us were stunned to learn that, for example, support for the Iraq War President had actually increased in Manhattan between the 2000 and 2004 elections.

What did this mean? Where were we headed as a nation? Were we destined to grow more enthralled by simple slogans aimed squarely at the fear that gripped us in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001? Would we ever be the same people we had been on September 10th of that year?

These were questions on my mind as we started out on what turned out to be an almost 3-year production and post-production period. It was raise a little cash, shoot one. Pause to regroup. Rinse and repeat. Until by the Spring of 2007 (just a few months before I'd fly to Lithuania to assist Ed Zwick as co-producer of DEFIANCE) when we'd composed a tapestry film, using 13 of the 15 short films we'd shot.

Saturday night I noticed some repeating tropes or images. For example, there seemed to be a lot of digging. Was my unconscious guiding me here? Possibly, although the Alabama piece ("We Dig a Big Hole") is inspired by actual remarks made by an Alabama state rep who introduced a bill in the state legislature to ban books written by gay authors.

But when I wrote the Nebraska piece in which a railroad magnate (played by Alvin Epstein) sets out to literally dig a hole and bury incriminating documents, I wasn't making the connection.

Another thing I noticed a lot? There are lots of shots throughout the film of people turning their back to the camera and walking away. J. Tucker Smith in Mississippi. Jenny Bacon in California. Carl Palmer in Louisiana. Stephen Bienskie and David Drake in Florida. Maureen Keiller in Massachusetts. And finally in the final shot of the entire film: John Magaro in Alabama. 

And another odd thing? I went to Liberty Island to capture my own shots of the Statue of Liberty for our one-sheet design. Eventually I settled on this arresting view of Lady Liberty from the back. I had no idea I was consistently doing this.

All these years later, I'm not sure what it meant exactly. But it somehow all feels right.