When you’re right on top of something it’s very difficult to see what it is.  Martin is humble in talking about his work.  Brian, while enthusiastic, seems to be one of those guys who selects his words carefully to not insult clients.  Jim, Dan and I like what we see. But, then on the other hand, we’re seeing ourselves.

Yet, in the last month alone, Our Longest Drive has been honored in two competitions in which companies with much bigger reputations and much larger budgets were involved.  So you can see that we’re pleased with what happened.

Two prizes are presented per category in Canada’s Northern Lights Award program.  The first prize in the Television category went to Anthony Bourdain for an episode of his No Reservations series on the Travel Channel that was filmed in Toronto.   The second Northern Lights Award in the category went to Our Longest Drive.

Northern Lights Awards, presented by Canada’s Tourism Commission, are won by producers of creative products that feature Canada.

The morning after our six-episode Golf Channel TV series won the Northern Lights Award, it won a second award. This time Our Longest Drive took down an Honorable Mention in the Cynopsis Sports Media Awards.

Representatives of shows produced for NBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN and Time Warner Cable packed the ballroom in the Yale Club to learn if their entries won.  But the Fox Soccer network nosed out 71 Degrees North in a battle of titans vying for Best Documentary Series.

Already, two theaters have told us they want us. The Wilmette Theatre in downtown Wilmette, IL has been working with Westmoreland Country Club, where the beginning and end of the documentary was filmed, to find a suitable date for a private screening.  The Saratoga Film Forum in Saratoga Springs, NY has selected Our Longest Drive to provide a grand finale to its summer season on Sunday evening, July 21.

We were in the final stages of finishing the film when good luck struck.  Our original thought was to hit the road with Our Longest Drive on the film festival circuit.  Then Golf Channel stepped in and pre-empted our goal with a deal that we couldn’t turn down.  Most producers begin with the festival circuit in hope that a network discovers them.  In our case, the network discovered us first.

Martin and Brian are almost finished with editing the documentary. The DVD will be a compilation of footage taken from the six-episode Golf Channel TV series, some outtakes that ran on the Golf Channel Web site and a few extras. Our Longest Drive, as a feature-length movie, should be finished by February 1 and packaged by March.

What comes then? Well, nobody knows. Yet, if you access this Web site from time to time, you’ll find out. Keep following us.

Note also, we’ve posted three new blog items written especially for the Golf Channel Web site. If you didn’t keep pace with our site when it was detoured to golfchannel.com, here’s your chance to read these three entries without having to wade through the other stuff. They are titled “I Pure It,” “Breakfast at the Arctic Half-Circle,” and “Sour-Toed Cocktail.” The blogs cover experiences we had on the trip but failed to write about while traveling. You can find them on the right side of the Home page. There, look below where you are now.

To get a picture of what we’re experiencing, try to envision life in the 1920s. Dawson’s streets aren’t paved.  The sidewalks are made of wood.  We play golf at the Top of the World Golf Course.  Golfers drive their cars on a simple ferry barge to get there.  Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

On the first night in Dawson, we amble over to Gertie’s Gambling Hall.  The gaudy emporium is reportedly Canada’s oldest casino.  We purchase tickets for the midnight show, a kind of musical review with scantily-clad girls who dance the can-can.  We meet a gaggle of women from the Netherlands – extra tall, of course – who, turned on by our camera, want to know what we’re there for.  They, like everyone else, consider Mike captivating.

The next evening begins in a peculiar way. We are having dinner at the Triple J Hotel and Saloon, when Willy, an Invaluit fiddler in a three-person music group playing an assortment of Bluegrass and mountain songs to the delight of a few clog dancers, including me, stumbles by to meet Mike.  When we tell Willy we are headed for Inuvik, he says, “Tell them that Willy says hi.”  The demand seems a little strange because Willy doesn’t identify “them,” doesn’t give his last name without prompting and hasn’t been outside of Dawson in five years – who’ll remember him?  We shall see, I suppose.

Three people that we’re sure not to see in Inuvik are a trio of women who ask to take our photograph.  They have seen us in Whitehorse at the Boston Pizza and in Skagway at the Red Onion Saloon and know that we’re making a movie.  They are heading home to wherever they came from as soon as their husbands show them they’re he-men by downing a sour-toe cocktail. Monkey see, monkey do.  We follow suit.

Jim and I can see that drinking a shot of whiskey in which a severed human toe has been dropped is not something that Dan wants to do.  But, he does.  In fact, we all do.  Mike is also in on the hoot, of course, so his name’s on the souvenir certificate that we’re taking home – proof that we’re foolish or, at least, typical tourists.

Dawn breaks in Eagle Plains, Yukon in the same gorgeous manner it has for most of the trip – sunny and still like a day in the Caribbean. When the sky is like this you can see as far as you wish, making one wonder if eyesight is limitless. The horizon is clearly defined and even the smallest of nature’s wonders, the pebbles at your feet and the spider webs stuck in the eaves of the building pop out of the background. As for the temperature, it hovers around 50 degrees. A tee-shirt and shorts are inappropriate.

Last night, Jim, Dan and I slept in the manner of Cub scouts bunked up in one room to save on the motel expense. The proprietors aren’t shy. They get what they can from the passersby, owning the lone oasis in 500 miles between Dawson and Inuvik. We went to bed late, drinking cognac and Scotch in a lounge that looked as if Ruth Wilkinson decorated it, with a worn-out plaid carpet and a stuffed animal’s head tacked to the wall above an out-of-tune upright piano. The location has wi-fi, but it doesn’t work all the time. Patience, as would be the case in anyplace way out of the way, is one of the Yukon’s prized virtues.

Come the morning, Dan sees what it is in the way of food that he can scrounge up from the kitchen. He manages to purchase six eggs, some potatoes, a slab of ham and a few links of sausage for $41 from the cook, who is busy preparing pancakes for truckers. This being Canada, the bill comes close to $50 American. We have fixins’ for toast in the RV and coffee. By 9:00 AM, after waiting 30 minutes for the crew to assemble, we’re on the Dempster again.

The Arctic Circle is designated by a semi-circular wooden sign that Jim calls the Arctic Half-Circle. The marquee proudly states Latitude 66 Degrees North. There’s one picnic table in the parking lot and another down a short hill in the scrub bush behind it. Armed with charcoal and lighter, Dan is worried we’ll start a forest fire. The nearest forest is 250 miles away. Ridiculous as this seems, he decides that the table down the hill is the one for us and falls on his ass in a heap trying to get there.

Failing the first attempt, we climb back up the hill and ignite our charcoals where the Arctic Half-Circle sign is. Dan cleans out a wound on his hand with peroxide as the bricks turn from black to black with an edge of gray at the edges. It’s not a bad wound, but it gives a chance to use the first-aid kit that we brought. We’re so hungry and eager to get going again that we begin cooking sooner than we probably should. Inuvik lies 10 hours ahead, maybe more.

I turn Mike’s urn over like an egg that is fried to the point that it’s ready to be eaten. You must open the box from the bottom. Three Phillips-head screws hold the hexagonal base in place. The screws turn easily. Under the lid, there’s a pad of pristine white cotton – a wig of sorts – and beneath that, a plastic bag holding ashes. I dip my finger into the light gray cremains and anoint my sun-tanned forehead as if it was Ash Wednesday. It’s a Monday.

The ashes are silky and have the substance of flour. There’s no odor. We leave the urn open and watch as the wind whips the top of the opened bag. All is still, except for the sound of the plastic moving against itself. But the ashes stay put where they are. Mike is happy. The four of us take our places for breakfast, saying nothing. Three of us eat as the fourth sits at the head of the table.

Dan takes charge of the mise en place. He is a tireless worker, the kind of man that any woman would want to marry if handy fits her description of romance. Jim and I attend to closing Mike up. The screws are missing. I am certain I placed them on the table next to him, but all I find there instead is a dime. The dime is Canadian, left there by some traveler before us, but I know that people like Cheri Allen and Leslie Johnson, who believe dimes that appear where you don’t expect them are signs from the dead, would think otherwise. I place the dime in Mike’s ashes before sealing him back up.

Dan admits that he picked up the screws being afraid that we’d lose them. Nevertheless, we apply duct tape to make Mike secure for the trip’s grand finale. The day is sad in a lot of ways, not the least of which is that we know that our trek to the end of the road is near over. A similar resignation is what Mike must have felt for his last 20 years.

Jim notices a patch of snow and begins making snowballs. Dan looks around for
rocks to set up two tee markers at a ledge that looks out on the endless earth.
I search for the clubs in the belly of the RV as a scraggly red fox, perhaps
looking for scraps, stares me down from about 30 yards away – a distance I’d
putt even if I was still on the fairway. Martin risks getting close to the
beast and feeding him Garrett’s Popcorn.

The sun is high, like you see in Texas. The ribbon of road we’d unraveled parts
the landscape like a snake on cement. You can see a convoy of trucks – maybe
two, maybe three – in the distance. They look like toys and the dust that they
raise looks like cotton.

Dan is the first to hit. His slice moves to the right and his ball flies about
250 yards. Yet, it looks like it’s been launched into space. Jim takes his
place on the tee and swings clumsily, whiffing entirely. Sparks fly from the
ground in which he’s pounded his tee but the ball doesn’t even quiver. “If I
wasn’t afraid of going over the cliff, maybe I’d be able to hit it,” he says.

Martin slides down the steep precipice and takes a position directly in front
of us. He wants us to hit while he films from below and we tell him a low shot
could kill him. Unafraid for the first time this trip that something bad may
occur, Dan elects to cooperate. He skulls one that sails past our director’s
head like a bullet shot from a gun. I ask if the camera’s okay.

That shot done, I produce the idea to tee my ball up on the Dempster. We find a
rubber-tipped mallet and pound a tee in the road. It won’t go into the ground
firmly, but I settle on using it anyway – we, with our thoughts that the trip’s
almost ended, and the ball, teetering on the crown of a small wooden peg, now
the cast in a beautiful balancing act. It is do or die for the Titleist.

My club travels in a confident arc. The Cobra’s head meets the face of the
Pro-V1 square in the center. I pure it. Upward and onward, the ball seeks a
path like a rocket on sonar – straight as can be, covering the brittle, cool
air hovering over the hard gravel highway with the heat of a missile. It
bounces once, bounces twice and bounces and bounces until you can no longer see
it. For all I know, it’s still bouncing.

(CHICAGO, IL – Monday)  If I was home in Chicago, it is doubtful that I would rise at 7:00 am to drive across town to a frozen parking lot from which I had to take a bus to get to the Jewish Center for a film that I’ve never heard of.  But in Park City, I do.  Finding North is one of 16 documentaries that have been chosen to screen at Sundance.  It’s about hunger in America.  TV’s Top Chef Tom Colicchio appears in Finding North as well as in the audience and not a bit underfed.  I bet he came here in some other way than I did.

Finding North documents the challenges faced by a handful of randomly selected subjects including a rancher in Colorado who begins work on his land at the same time that I awoke and finishes his stint as a custodian in the high school at 11:00 pm to put food on the table and a single-mom with two kids n Philadelphia who lands a job after looking nine months and then loses her right to food stamps.  The film is mostly interviews and graphics which support the argument that food deprivation is another way that the politicians are screwing the public in favor of special interests.

Something’s wrong with Finding North despite its lofty goals.  It comes off as a cause-driven, movement-supported movie that was made by hired guns so that somebody would have a calling card for selling the idea that one out of every four children is hungry and Congress should do something to fix that.  Unlike 1/2 Revolution,  Finding North, at least to me, looks store-bought like the bags of chips that constitute the kind of affordable food that too many people consider as the staple of their diets.  Unlike1/2 Revolution, all the questions posed in the post-screening are really political statements and none of them is about filmmaking.  That being argued, I wiped away tears several times.

Back in the condo by 11:30 am, I make a sandwich of melted cheddar cheese and summer sausage on a piece of fancy white bread from a loaf that cost four times more than what the government has budgeted for a school kid’s subsidized lunch.  I then peel a tangerine, pour the final cup of Dunkin’ Donuts regular blend from the coffee-maker and, completely sated, forget everything I saw 30 minutes ago.  My concentration has turned to figuring out how to stuff two bottles of $34.95 High West Distillery Double Rye whiskey in my luggage, which is already bulging from my souvenir Sundance long-sleeved, thermal tee shirt, a couple bags of Garrett Popcorn and a couple dozen DVDs we failed to distribute.

For me, Sundance 12 might have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  As amusing as our story is and expertly as Martin has filmed it, Dan, Jim and I don’t have the Danish government’s support that 1/2 Revolution was able to put behind its creation or a star like Jeff Bridges, who Colicchio recruited for Finding North, involved in Our Longest Drive.  Nevertheless, Martin texts me from the airport that he’s “looking forward to attacking the assembly edit.”

The original idea of Robert Redford’s dream was to create a film festival where independent filmmakers with small budgets and big ideas could emerge from oblivion.  Spike Lee, Sigourney Weaver, Bruce Willis, Peter Jackson, Richard Gere, Tracy Morgan, Taylor Swift and 24 members of the Kennedy family were Sundance participants visiting Park City this weekend who undoubtedly left town disappointed because they didn’t spot me.

Postscipt:  Maureen served as Mike’s custodian today. He had difficulty passing through security at the Salt Lake City airport.   A very thoughtful TSA agent placed two coins beneath his urn and then watched to see if the coins could be viewed while looking through Mike’s ashes.  He was surprised that this protocol proved unnecessary at Midway on the way into Utah, but pleased that the coins were visible.

(DEER VALLEY, UT – Sunday)  At least half the people I meet at Brenda Sexton’s Windy City West party are neighbors of the couple that owns the condo in which the former Illinois Film Board’s president is hosting 200 of her nearest and dearest friends.  I suppose there are genuine friendships being rekindled. But it seems that a lot of guests – including me – are here for the experience or, on the other hand, to make something happen. 

Several dozen similar parties are raging in Park City on this first weekend of the Sundance Film Festival.  Some visitors to this smart Western town never get to see a movie.  Nobody seems bothered by the nearly two feet of fresh powder that has fallen, making driving the mountain roads treacherous.  All is good.  Hope is high.  Pour another of those Mormon-inspired weak cocktails.  I’m all in.

There’s no question about why Brenda’s been good at any job she’s held.  She looks like a rocket ship in a black, one-piece knit dress with belt adorned by a chunky silver and rhinestone necklace.  Other women at the party appear chic, but none like her, and her appearance – the look of a woman hanging on to her youth in a sexy way that is nonetheless appropriate – bespeaks of her escape to California where the fashion is glam-ier than Chicago. 

It is difficult for me to sample the Swedish meatballs, crudités and Eli’s Cheesecake while holding Mike’s urn in one hand and a Stella Artois in the other.  “What’s that?” I am asked by a hopeful filmmaker from New Mexico who suspects that I have brought a cherry wood box to the party on purpose.  But, surprisingly, the people you’d most expect to exhibit a curiosity – Chicago news anchors like Linda Yu and Diane Burns – pass me by, proving clearly that they are merely readers of the news and not discoverers of it.

Brenda’s is our second party of the evening.  The one before was hosted by the kind folks at Garrett Popcorn.  I’m remiss by calling them only kind.  They are obviously smart, too.  Nine months ago, someone at Garrett Popcorn made the wise decision to support Our Longest Drive financially.  We played our trailer at the Garrett Popcorn party.  It was the first time that anyone outside of family and very close friends of the producers has ever seen the footage.  I didn’t hear a “Bravo.”  But I did hear, “I can’t wait to see the whole movie.”

In a private screening yesterday afternoon, wives and girlfriend of the intrepid travelers laughed and slapped their knees at the too familiar antics, foilbles and foolishness of these highly flawed characters. Will the general public embrace the stiff jointed and wizened vagabonds? Tonight, as searchlights crisscross in the sky over Park City and the Sundance Festival we’ll get our first indication of what many see as “big box office” and many red carpets to come. And are the reports true that Ricky Gervais is already working us into his quips for next year’s Golden Globes?

(DEER VALLEY, UT – Saturday)  It’s the second day of Sundance and festival film-goers are forming a long line in a yellow-lamped alley alongside the Egyptian Theater at 8:30 am.  People are queuing up for the North American premiere of a film titled 1/2  Revolution, a documentary feature about a family that lived a block away from Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the demonstrations that led to Hosni Mubarak’s  departure from power. 

The 1/2 in the title refers to the fact that Egypt’s revolution hasn’t ended, explains co-director Karim El Hakim, who takes a spin at a temporary lectern that a spastic young intern has dragged up out of the shadows. But it also refers to the fact that each of the characters are of dual nationality. The film is a powerful portrayal of friends at the center of war and it pleases the audience primarily because of the filmmakers’ undertaking – that is, that they joined the ranks of the thousands of protestors who risked their lives in the maelstrom of discord.

El Hakim never intended 1/2 Revolution to become a feature-length film.  But financial backing from the Danish government enabled El-Hakim (an American-born Danish-Egyptian) to place the 100 hours of footage his friends and he took on 12 days last spring into the hands of three different editors, the last of which won an Oscar, and the pages of credits devoted to people who worked on his film convinced me that we, with Our Longest Drive, aren’t nearly as equipped to compete at a festival like this as we think.

Regardless, our stature as amateurs doesn’t deter us from feeling good about what we are doing.  We sail through a lunch at High West Distillery and return to the condo to stuff disks into wallets.  Dan places a DVD in the TV and we stop to watch Our Longest Drive’s trailer and segment.  The trailer summons applause as if the six condo audience members watching it were at the Egyptian.  Leslie sheds tears and wastes no time in predicting an Oscar.  I know that when it’s out time for 90 minutes, the segment we have will have to be trimmed by half. But she doesn’t want to lose anything.

In the evening, we go to an art gallery where Benyaro, one of the bands that have contributed music to our film, is playing.  We hook up with Martin but turn down his invitation to join his friends and him for dinner.  Maureen has made us plans to dine in Deer Valley at the St. Regis Hotel’s mountaintop restaurant.  We pile in a funicular, looking back on the Earth as if it was Hollywood.

The J&G Grill, as the restaurant is named, is a beehive of activity.  Yahoo has taken over one of the rooms for a party and an adjacent bar is packed wall-to-wall despite cocktails that one can’t get drunk on.  We’ve joined a tony crowd, with aspiring actresses in $400 haircuts and wannabe bigshots who bring their dogs along.  Music by Moby’s piped in and outdoors on the patio a brushfire blazes – controllably, as is everything in Utah, of course.

Dan places Mike at the head of our place setting which, in effect, occupies the center of one long table that sits in the lobby.  Like women dining alone or kids who don’t know better, we’ve been placed somewhere others who are younger and hipper wouldn’t fashion – a function of gray hair and Midwest politeness.  But we’re happy.  Kay is a friendly server and the food is delicious, and I, with my paralyzed vocal cord, can talk and be heard.

Back home by nine, we change into pee-jays and do what we came here to do – watch a movie.  But the one that we’re left with is The Help, and, despite accolades from some critics nationally, it’s so bad, so impossible to watch and so poorly delivered on TV by Xfinity that we call it a night early.