Prologue and a Mission Statement

All aboard the train of thought...

For the past few months I’ve been tumbling the idea of making a short personal documentary about our Pizza Planet Truck project. At the time of typing it has been on the road for over a decade and even though a short video was put together of the first road trip, the actual story of the project hasn’t been compiled.

However, I’m having trouble figuring out where to start. A few years ago I got together with a small creative team to try to assemble a pitch and had some trouble settling on the overarching narrative. More specifically I had trouble accepting the fact that I would likely be the subject, or at the very least, the majority of the story would be told from my perspective. At the time I was in the midst of a dark night of the soul, feel listless and useless as a whole. Picturing a documentary series where I was one of subjects that the story would orbit around was a lot to consider. It felt overwhelming. Ultimately due to the dragging of my feet to get any kind of story structure jotted down as well as our main financier disappearing off the map the project was shelved.

Now two years later I’ve been invigorated by reviewing the nearly 32 hours of footage from the start of the project to the present day and would like to have another crack at it. It feels like the right time.

Where to start though? If I trace back to why the truck was made it goes back to working on projects after the high school movie crew went off to college. What was the high school movie crew? Well, you have to go back to middle school and my interest in film. When did the interest in film start? When I wanted to be an animator and realized I couldn’t draw and lacked the focus to practice. Why did I want to be an animator? The list goes on and on. The other day I remembered a distinct memory from when I was four and playing with McDonald’s Happy Meal toys in the kitchen pretending I was making movies, and this thread followed me through the majority of my life. Do I start there? Is that too self indulgent?

Then the impostor syndrome creeps in. Would this be interesting? HOW can I make it compelling enough to sustain itself? I’ve had an itch to work on a project like this since high school when we only had a few project under our belts but looking back there’s a surprisingly large amount of footage and photos to sift through. Maybe there are flecks of gold in them thar hills.

And now an exercise in spaghetti throwing:

Like most kids I acted out and played pretend
I enjoyed drawing
I had a half formed drive for enterprising which resulted in me being sent to the principal’s office in the 4th grade when I doodled a poster for comics I intended to draw and sell for $1 and got slapped with a referral for “concocting a moneymaking scheme that would draw funds away from the school”
I got a Lego Moviemaker set in the 5th grade and made little short films with friends
My friend’s and I tried to write a play in the 6th grade and were introduced to iMovie
We made a bunch of short films and silly videos, we entered film festivals and received an award for best short film at our high school.
As friend’s chose their schools and went their separate ways I took on the role of George Bailey, scooting around town trying to keep busy.
We tried to shift to prank videos, which left a bad taste in our mouth. Inspired by Improv Everywhere we shifted to fun pop culture based projects and videos.
Toy Story 3 came out and the decision to make the truck was cemented.
The truck was made and the rest is history(?)

This feels like a natural path to boil down as the intro.

Why now? What’s the point?

The time feels right to tell the story of the truck. The time feels right to wrap it up. I have met so many wonderful people and now friends who I could’ve only met due to cruising around in the truck. To me, the movie would be a salute to that. Would it be nice to organize events during the drive? Certainly. If it ends up that we just drive across the country to visit friends, reminisce sit in that appreciation of the circumstances and to document that. That would be enough. That would be the proper send off. To tread the line of nostalgia and the satisfaction of a job well done.

A victory lap across the country.