Scott Roberts (photo by Donna Lametterey)
Filmed in Platte City, ‘Letters Home’ is a seriocomic coming-of-age story based on the director’s formative years
When calling director Scott Roberts, it seemed apropos to first offer well wishes to him, given the fires in Los Angeles. Roberts’ Platte City-filmed “Letters Home” began streaming on three platforms — Prime Video, Plex and Verizon FIOS — on Jan. 17. However, despite his LA phone number, the director spoke to me from New York, where he has lived for the past four years.
“I really love it,” he says. “All of the things you hear about, the noise, the crime are there, but it’s also known for how life is lived on the streets. I’ve never made so many friends.”
Roberts sounds unlike his film’s younger self, Scott Singleton, who worries about what awaits him at his new school when he moves with his family from Kansas City to Platte City. The film is Roberts’ seriocomic valentine to his adopted hometown. And it was a film with an Odyssean trajectory before it was included at last spring’s Kansas City Film Festival International, held at AMC Ward Parkway 14 Theatres.
Shot during the summer of 1998 on location with “incredible contributions” from the town, the film is focused on Roberts’ own formative years. “This really was a group exercise,” Roberts says. “Everyone in the cast and crew contributed immensely to the final result. Sometimes that help was financial, but it also came in the form of donated costumes.”
The generosity extended to Roberts’ choice to shoot in Super 16.
“Film is horrendously expensive. We tried to conserve,” he says of his use of Super 16, “but we didn’t want to do digital, which, at the time, in 1998, looked like VHS. Digital took ten years to look acceptable.”
Likewise, after completing shooting, Roberts undertook a yearslong effort to finalize the film’s postproduction.
After completing the shots, Roberts moved to LA with the goal of editing the film and getting it shown. While working “grunt jobs” to pay the rent and working on others’ projects, Roberts continued tweaking his film. He made a 4K scan of the film, edited, and mixed the sound. The film’s score, though, owes what Roberts calls a “lucky find” in composer Erick Schroder, whose credits include “Angry Neighbors,” a 2022 revenge comedy that starred Frank Langella and Bobby Cannavale.
“Letters Home” jumped around in its later iterations on the festival circuit, including Tallgrass in October 2023. The film, Roberts says, benefited primarily from his conversations with writer-director H.P. Mendoza, whose “The Secret Art of Human Flight” was a nominee for the Founders Award at Tribecca in 2023.
Roberts gives thanks to Mendoza and to KCFFI’s executive director Veronica Elliott Loncar for the feedback that helped him transform “Letters Home” from being what he called a “memory film” to its present form.
Roberts shifted from a serious tone and allowed the humor of his protagonist’s situations to shape his narrative. And though he couldn’t have known or planned on the film being a ’90s flashback, it does evoke a pre-cellphone charm. All the cast are having fun, particularly Penny Porter as the high school diva, Irma, who, through the film, goads Scott to do what makes him happy.
For Roberts, the odyssey in finishing the film neared its destination with a phone call from a sales agent with the appropriately named Blood Sweat Honey. “I was already revising the film,” says Roberts, “so I asked to hold off. We reconnected in February 2024 as I finished the final (current) version of the movie.” The agent, Alex Nohe, introduced Roberts to the distributor Buffalo 8, a subsidiary of Bondit Media Capital.
And, while the film’s completion and entrance to three streaming platforms has been arduous, Roberts sounds grateful for everything that his work has yielded.
“Doing this low-budget gave me a new appreciation for the process,” Roberts says. “We had already passed the hat as many times as we could. I was working on the film with a focus of keeping a roof over my head,” he says, referring to his time in LA.
“The film took one thousand percent of my energy,” Roberts says. “It was an inspiring journey, but it’s been heartbreaking along the way.” Roberts speaks to his desire for the cast to finally be able to see themselves as they were that summer. Two of his cast members, Chas Kneisler and Wendell Doyle, have since passed.
Still, Roberts says, “The version of the film today is because of the problems.”
“Letters Home” is available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime Video, Plex and Verizon FIOS.
