Dinosaurs and Rocketships

Sept. 22, 2008

After two weeks in the warm and slow-paced south of France, I took a train last Tuesday from Aix-en-Provence to the Alsace city of Strasbourg. The visit wouldn't just be a tourist stop for me however. I was there on business matters.

My mom, Liz Fulton, had a short documentary accepted into the Strasbourg Film Festival, and I would be attending the event as her rep. A longtime television journalist who now does freelance editing and producing for the news segments for NBC and CBS's morning show programs, my mom had created the documentary with her colleague and friend Bruce Stanberry of Hastings on Hudson, N.Y. The 17-minute documentary called Dinosaurs and Rocketships is about a wacky artist from Woodstock, N.Y. It offers a glimpse into the life of Steve Heller, a 60-something year old eccentric who creates life-size dinosaur sculptures out of scrap metal and rocketships out of valuable old car parts. He is essentially a Peter Pan figure, someone who never outgrew his love for tinkering and toys.

The film was a pet project for my mom and Bruce who shot the piece over the course of a few days and edited the piece over several weeks.

"It's a little film with a big heart," my mom has said.

The documentary was one of 155 accepted out of about 750 entries for the festival. It has also shown at the Simon's Rock Festival and will be shown at the Woodstock Film Fest in October.