Brian on Fox News

Veterans Day week has quickly become our favorite holiday. After the Veterans Day parade I hustled down to Fox News to talk about the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities program (EBV). The EBV provides free business training to disabled vets in order to help them open their own business. I graduate the EBV program from Syracuse in 2008 and it is one of the key reasons I am here today. I was invited onto Fox's Situation Room to talk about the EBV program, being a Veteran Entrepreneur, and of course, CHOSIN! What a week! We will post the interview online when we get it!

Semper Fi,

Brian

Anton and I had the privilege of marching with the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America in the NY City Veterans Day Parade. It was a great time and the people of the city came out by the thousands to show their support. After the parade we went to an after-party at the Crown Plaza. We had a lot of help and we are grateful to the IAVA and all its supporters.

Semper Fi,

Brian

Marine Corps Birthday Ball

As Marines, we always throw a great party for our Birthday on 10 November. This year I was invited as the Guest of Honor to the Avenel (NJ) Marine Corps League's ball in Woodbridge, NJ. It was a great time and in keeping with the tradition of "once a Marine, always a Marine", these guys continue to serve. These great Marines donated $2,500 to our Toys for Tots campaign. In my 14 years of service, nothing has been more rewarding than to put a smile on a kid's face. In these pics are me with the oldest Marine and the youngest Marine present at the ball. The oldest Marine was fought in WWII and the youngest just returned from Iraq 2 months ago. Now that is what I call tradition.

Semper Fi,

Brian

USS New York

Brian managed to wrangle a pair of tickets to the USS New York commissioning ceremony held yesterday near the USS Intrepid. Hilary Clinton was the keynote speaker for the event, preceded by several dignitaries from the Navy and Northrop Grumman. Our Commandant, General James T. Conway, also said a few words. I may be a little biased, but I think he stole the show. He ended his piece by specifically addressing the Marines in the crowd with a famous quote from George Orwell: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

As long as America has her Marine Corps, I know that I will sleep just fine.

Now and update on the film's progress: Brian and I have been hard at work editing and we were able to hand a 1 and 1/2 hour rough cut (very very very rough) to our composer last week. Will Bates (http://www.willbates.net/) is writing the music for the film, which you can hear on the trailer we now have posted on our home page. We should have a rough cut ready for test screenings by Thanksgiving. Deadlines for the spring film festival circuit are right around the corner, so we are going to have to work fast.

S/F

Anton

Editing Editing Editing

Film Week was a success for us-- we couldn't thank the team at the Independent Feature Project (www.ifp.org) enough for all they have done for us since we started this project. We had some great meetings, made some even better contacts, and it was a lot of fun getting to talk shop over a few beers with fellow filmmakers.

Deadlines are coming up for the spring film festival circuit, so we are now up to our ears in editing. We've got 200+ hours of interview footage to dig through, and I just ordered roughly 5 hours of archival footage to be transfered into HD video. Over half of the material we found at the National Archives (www.nara.gov) has never been copied for use in any film, and we even found a few reels that have never even been taken off the shelf-- it feels pretty amazing to be the first person in almost 60 years to look at these images of the Chosin Reservoir Campaign. Lots of work to do and it's a race against time.

On a side-note, I wanted to tell everyone about a film titled Lebanon written and directed by Israeli filmmaker Samuel Maoz. I took the time to watch the film at the New York Film Festival this week, and was blown away. The picture focuses on a tank team fighting in the 1982 Leabanese War. As a combat veteran, I have to say that Samuel Maoz did an amazing job of showing a very intimate, human, and realistic portrait of soldiers in combat. As a filmmaker, I applaud his mastery of the craft-- great script, beautiful cinematography, and the sound shook you out of your seat and made you feel like you were in the tank with the characters in the film. I don't believe that the film has been released in the US as of yet, but keep an eye out for it in the future-- hopefully on Netflix at the least. Here's an article on the film in Variety: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117945011.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

Semper Fi,

Anton

Film Week Kicks-Off

Hi everyone,

Independent Film Week in New York City started on Saturday, and Brian and I are pretty pumped. Film Week is a sort of film festival for unfinished projects. We have meetings with several TV and film companies this week, and it should all be a great learning experience at the least.

Brian and I also met quite a few filmmakers who are avid supporters of the veteran community, and it looks like we may be able to dig up some more work for the Marines we worked with from the Wounded Marine Careers Foundation (www.woundedmarinecareers.org) during the course of shooting Chosin.

Stay tuned in-- we should have some exciting news to share in the upcoming weeks.

S/F
Anton

Production Complete

Hi everyone. We finished our tour of Texas last month and less than 24-hours after we got back home to the east coast, we drove to Syracuse, NY. Texas was a great success and we interviewed four more veterans in Syracuse, to include 1stLt Joe Owen of B 1/7 and author of the book Colder Than Hell. Brian also conducted a presentation to the most recent class of veterans attending the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities, or EBV. Brian is an alumnus of the program at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University and this film project was born from his time at the school. Syracuse University has a long history of supporting veterans and this program is just another way that they are opening doors for our nation's heroes when they come back home.

We are now getting ready for Independent Film Week, which is just over the horizon: September 19th. We finished a 15 minute "sampler" DVD for our presentation at the event, but we are keeping it under wraps for now. Brian, Adam and I spent last weekend glued to the computer for two days to finish the DVD and the coffee pot was working overtime with us. We still have hours and hours of footage to dig through over the net few months aa we edit, but we are determined to have a final cut ready by Christmas with a January release date. We'll keep you posted.

As we finished up production, another New Jersey Newspaper, The Hub, took interest in our project and they printed an article on the front page this morning. You can read the story here: http://hub.gmnews.com/news/2009/0903/front_page/003.html

Also, word of the film reached as far as South Korea this month, and two different radio stations conducted phone interviews with Brian. The people of South Korea by and large have a strong reverence for the veterans of the Korean War that sacrificed so much to protect South Korea. The shows have already aired, and we will post audio clips on the website as soon as we are able to get MP3 files from the radio stations.

Semper Fi,

Anton