The Civil War Reenactment Documentary That Never Made It to the Battlefield
Steven Leckart and I almost made a film about Gettysburg reenactors. Then COVID arrived, the shoot vanished, and the project became a lesson in timing and remaining excited about the work.
GUEST CASE FILE 002: Steven Leckart / Gettysburg!
Thanksgiving break in 2019, filmmaker Steven Leckart came to me with a fun idea for a documentary.
Civil War reenactors.
More specifically: the annual Gettysburg reenactment had been canceled for 2020, and the one dude named Dustin who had decided he was going to bring it back.
That was the hook.
Not just men in wool uniforms pretending to shoot muskets in a field but a film about a dying tradition, a town built on memory and a group of people trying to preserve something that looked very different depending on where you stood politically, historically, emotionally, or morally.
Steven saw a movie in that.
Damnit if I didn’t too.
At the time, Steven was already deep in the documentary world. He had worked as a journalist, writer, producer, and filmmaker on projects like Challenger: The Final Flight, What’s My …
