More updates- and a new adddress

Elephants in Rhode Island, or, specifically, Uproar in Pawtucket, now has a producer!
Meet Genevieve Belcher, everyone. She's an amazing woman, who is making some real forward motion possible in the project.
For one thing, we now have a single address for all communications. It's elephantsinri@gmail.com. Now why didn't I think of that?
Soon, we'll be having a fundraiser through both kickstarter and indiegogo to pay for archival footage, for voiceover actors, editing, scriptwriting and music, etc. We'll certainly let everyone know when all of this goes live.

The Latest

Elephants seem to be on a lot of people's minds these days. Water for Elephants has opened wide, and, more to the point, The Ballad of Baby Roger has been scheduled for broadcast on RI PBS (WSBE) at 7PM on June 18th. Hooray!
Yesterday I received an invitation from the Ashaway, RI Public Library to be their guest speaker for "National Elephant Appreciation Day" on September 22 this year. Of course, I was thrilled to accept, and will be winding my way to far off Ashaway (about 30 miles, as the elephant flies)that day with my speech and my DVD of Roger in hand. Be there or be square!
But that's not the only exposure Roger will be receiving. At 3.30PM on May 27th, Roger will be dancing his way into the hearts of one and all at the Providence Athenaeum in Providence. I've been invited by the children's librarian there to chat about him and show the movie, so it will be a story straight from the children of 1893 to the kiddies of the 21st century.
In the meantime, I am working (slowly) on Fanny. I have engaged a fundraiser to help me get some bucks together and we'll meet this week for a strategy and policy session. If you would love to help on the project, get in touch with me through this blog or at tapit@care2.com

Here comes the Press

Two articles in came out in the local press today bringing the elephants' stories to a wider audience. It shows how differently the same material can be covered.

I was thrilled with the South County Independent's survey of Roger and the whole project. I was delighted to meet the writer briefly at the actual premiere, and he did a bang up job of getting the word out to his audience. Read the story at http://www.scindependent.com/articles/2011/03/03/arts_and_living/doc4d6fbb0920be9932659438.txt

The other story, in the Jamestown Press, gave the story a more island-centric slant which was very cool to read. A few facts were off, but overall, I was delighted that it got Roger's story around the island. And I really loved the title.
See it at: http://www.jamestownpress.com/news/2011-03-03/News/Local_filmmaker_exposes_the_elephant_in_the_room.html

More as things progress...

Fanny's on Facebook

Well, I've begun serious work on Fanny's story and ran across her facebook page last night! According to Joy Frisch Lewis, who started the page, "My niece (who is 38) and I had been talking about Fanny and trips to Slater Park, so I decided to do it [start the page]."
Rght now I'm trying to contact several of the posters to see if we can talk about their memories of Fanny.
Check it out at
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=117477074949195&v=wall

What came after...

Premiere Day went off without a hitch. The Museum was stuffed (forgive the pun) and we went into a second showing of Roger for an overflow crowd. I was honored to see that even the elephant manager from the zoo, Jen Warmbold, was there! Unfortunately, I didn't know she was in the audience until after the show was over. If I'd known, I would have called her up to field questions from the crowd.

Since then, I've given two interviews with local reporters who are interested in the project as a whole. They asked some great questions and I'm eager to see the results of our conversations in their next issues at The Jamestown Press and The South County Independent.

Roger's video is now available on Amazon.com, which is pretty thrilling, and the book that goes with it, The Ballad of Baby Roger is available from me personally (I'll even autograph it for you!) at tapit@ care2.com.

Premiere Day!

Tomorrow is Roger's premiere at the Museum of Natural History in Providence. This is all very exciting for me and for the others who are involved. Because the actors all worked for credits, this is my chance to give back to them by making them all stars! (I wish I had a red carpet for them!)

The Ballad of Baby Roger is now available on DVD at Amazon.com, right alongside of "The Ballad of Easy Rider" and a three CD boxed set of "Memories" by Elvis. Quite the company!

The first viewer reviews are in and included this kudo from Chicago- Great story, well told, and nicely put together.

The weather report for tomorrow is dicey. Snow is supposed to be coming in at precisely the few hours we need for the premiere and set up, etc. I'm crossing my eyes and fingers that the weathermen, who are so often wrong, will get it wrong this time...

Updates, updates, updates....

Best news in the world for The Ballad of Baby Roger!

Everything has been finished, the premiere is ready to happen, RI International Film Festival has accepted the application to consider it for their festival, the duplicates are being made, I will get the preview copy of the disc from the video on demand source that will make it possible to buy Roger from the web, the RI Film Collaborative gave it good marks when it was reviewed there, the IMDB (Imdb.com) has granted Roger its own page (and me and all my cast and crew as well) and, as of today, Rhode Island PBS has notified me they're happy to broadcast Roger once I finish jumping through all their hoops!

It is a long and sometimes frustrating process, but it feels good to see Roger in public.

And I have begun serious work on the story of Fanny the elephant! Her film will be called, "Uproar in Pawtucket".