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As a child I was riveted by my grandfather's tales of fighting on Iwo Jima during WWII. Hearing his stories of that epic conflict was the catalyst that propelled me into storytelling. When he went to war he was 17 going on 18, and his experiences were filled with both acts of courage and pure terror. It has always seemed a great paradox to me that such a horrible stage as war can produce such incredible acts of compassion and sacrifice to counterbalance the sheer horror. I come from a long line of veterans and that conflict never changes. These are men who are charged to kill or be killed. It is an awesome responsibility that I wanted to showcase with the respect it deserves.

Lush sweeping fields now mark the places where hundreds of thousands of men died violently during the American Civil War. Moss now covers the once blood soaked stone walls that mark the landscape. These walls are like skeletons, serving as reminders of how our nation was once so violently divided. The Civil War was a conflict that blurred the lines between friends and foes

Growing up in rural New Jersey, I heard tales of one of the under-told movements of Civil War times—The Underground Railroad. Lining the Delaware River are churches that hide a great secret. Beneath these churches are entrances to tunnels that run under the river to the other side. It is through these tunnels that Abolitionists would help runaway slaves escape to freedom. The Underground Railroad was the first Civil Rights movement in the United States in which blacks and whites worked together for the same cause.

With SCARECROW I set out to tell the story of Jack Wren, a young man who in a single day engages in his first battle and runs away terrified by death. Driven by love he finds a way to be a hero and confront death in order to save the life of another. Jack is a Confederate soldier of the South, and the life he saves is that of Uriah, a runaway slave fleeing North on the Underground Railroad.

These are the types of stories that drive me to make movies, tales about people from opposite sides of the spectrum who learn to see the humanity in each other. The cast and crew of this film set out to explore the meaning of bravery and sacrifice, characteristics of humanity as relevant today as ever before. My wish is that audiences will watch this film about events of long ago and see and feel how they are reflected in the world we live in now, a nonsensical world filled with terror and conflict, bravery and sacrifice. The lessons of the past are the same today. And underlying everything there is always a message of hope that we together will find a way to make the world better.