How I came to write Survival of the Holy Fool

BTS of shooting the Holy Fool trailer
BTS of shooting the Holy Fool trailer

HOW I CAME TO WRITE THE STORY

I started doing research for this film in 2016 and finished writing it in spring of 2020. There are several reasons how the story and structure came about.

-I initially became interested in writing the story because I was a gentrifier in a white working class neighborhood that had been rooted in Philadelphia for 150 years...here comes the artists. There was animosity and an under current of fear between me and my neighbors. I had a lot of guilt about that. My remedy was to research the area and learn some of the history.  I quickly discovered that among a certain group of people it was common knowledge that there were lead contaminates within and around the dead factories that were on every corner block. At one point there were 37 lead smelters fully operating in my neighborhood. I thought this had the potential to be an interesting plot line.