Finally … Long over due, we have a final cut!
So I realized that I haven’t posted to this site since October last year. That would have been about the time that I realized that I wasn’t going to finish this film within the timeframe that I originally intended. To be honest I ran into something like a writers block (editors block?) for a while. I think I just needed to step back from the material and let it ferment in my brain before I could just sit down and carve out the final cut. I’m not going to make excuses. It just came out when it was ready I guess. So now to answer the frequently asked questions: Question One:...
read moreSoundtrack Recording
We went into the studio last week and recorded some songs for the soundtrack. We are humbled that Pokey LaFarge, Mat Wilson were willing to write original songs for our film. Irene Allen was also good enough to contribute one of her originals as well and we all convened on Jupiter Studios to record them last week. We recorded demos of these songs last spring, one of which “Brick By Brick” written by Mat Wilson and performed by him and Pokey can be heard in our Trailer. I gotta say … that it sounds much better with a full band, which is not to say that it sounded bad...
read moreWhat Brick Thieves Do …
St. Louis brick thieves made national news a couple of weeks back when the New York Times published this piece by Malcomb Gay. Of course this story is nothing new to us. Brick thieving is a big part of this project. It would be hard to do a film about St. Louis brick and not touch on this subject. It’s a devastating problem in some parts of the city. We told you earlier in this project that we spoke to Alderman Sam Moore and he is probably one of the few City officials who has long taken this problem seriously. The causes and lack of attention are complicated as most urban...
read moreRecent Press: St. Louis Magazine and Where We Are …
We’ve been remiss on keeping updates on this blog. We’re sorry about that. We’re trying to wrap up the final bits of the film before we go full bore into post production. However we did get some nice press in the September issue of St. Louis Magazine. So thanks so much to Stefene Russell for writing this really nice piece. So about our progress with the film. We’re a little behind or not depending on how you look at it. Our original goal (which was fairly ambitious) was to have the film completed by next month (October 15) in order for it to be screened in the St....
read moreTrip to the Geology and Land Survey Division of the MO DNR
Bowls and I had to make a day trip to the Geology and Land Survey Division of the Missouri Department of Natural Resources in Rolla this week to do an interview. We met Mimi Garstang there who is the former Missouri State Geologist. We wanted to talk to her for a couple of reasons. She conducted a survey in the 1980s that mapped where all the coal and clay mines were in the City of St. Louis and we wanted to get a geological perspective on why the area was so rich in the clay–the raw material of our wonderful St. Louis Brick. We conducted the interview among the artifacts in the Ed...
read moreElaborating on the title
One of the things we’ve both spent a lot of time thinking and talking about is the film’s title. I wasn’t instantly sold when Bill first mentioned the quote and presented a rough draft of the title. Almost immediately he changed my mind by elaborating that it was chance that St. Louis had such an abundance of clay, chance that brought so many skilled immigrants to St. Louis where they were allowed to do such amazing brick work, and now we have a chance to save what we still have; many fortunes were built in brick, St. Louis brick is our underappreciated fortune and the brick...
read moreAbout Brick By Chance and Fortune
St. Louis is a city with a rich heritage of brick architecture. Home to some of the largest and most innovative clay working companies of the nineteenth century, you can still see some of the finest examples of brick work ever produced all over the city and region. Today the city's brick heritage is under threat by neglect, brick theft and urban renewal.
