The film began over 50 years ago after Robert Redford optioned Ray Mungo’s book "Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service," which had made a splash when it was published in the early ‘70s. Visions of sugar plums danced in our heads after the signing and champagne brunch, as we all envisioned the money and fame that would come from an actual movie about our young lives. Redford hired Ray to write the screenplay.

Big mistake, as Ray’s script had nothing to do with the original story. The option lapsed, and even though Mungo has been paid good money over the years by selling the rights, no movie has ever been actually produced. Later that year, we met with Ray and others on an island in the middle of the Mississippi in Minneapolis and came up with what we thought was a very promising treatment for a narrative film.

Unfortunately, it did not go anywhere. During the subsequent decades, we made films about the nuclear power issue, Agent Orange and the Vietnam veterans, environment, peace and drug issues as well as other eclectic topics and did our fair share of work freelancing. Over that time, we made stabs at tackling our communal origin story.

We shot film and produced demo reels that never seemed to congeal into a full-scale production. We put it off as a project best tackled from the perspective of our middle age. But that came and went.

In 2023, I resolved to start again. Gathering and digitizing all of the material that had been shot over a .