22 Miles From Trenton

For some time, I was fascinated with events surrounding the original 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. I mean, I still am, but when I was researching the time period for my script Kiddo and, then Super Chief, I felt a desire to start and then complete a short script around that night. Hence, 22 Miles From Trenton was born.

Summary:

October 30, 1938. Orson Welles infamous broadcast of the radio play, War of the Worlds, plays on the radio which causes a panic in real life for some people including 12 year-old Penny, who thinks her older sister is in trouble. Penny races into the night to save her sister from the oncoming alien invasion.

Fun Fact:

This project was in-development for a while and we had plans to make this short film happen, but we got advice from a producer that it would be easier to get money for a feature rather than a short film, so I started working on a longer version. But everything I wrote felt like I was making a story longer for no good reason. Some stories have their length and nothing more. And, obviously, we ended up not doing the feature or the short. This wasn't a fun fact, was it?

Check out an excerpt from the script.