A number of people have been asking about the follow-up to Brainwashing 101, the 46-minute documentary on political correctness that On The Fence Films released last fall. (For those of you who are new to this website, Brainwashing 101 is a preview version of a in-development documentary slated for release as a feature-length film by the end of the year.) Some post-production issues are beyond my control, and my experience in the software business leads me to be cautious about setting release dates. But if all goes well, the end-of-year target is feasible.

Since January 2004, I’ve been working full-time on this project. During that time, I’ve been traveling the country, visiting various college campuses collecting footage for the film. Yesterday, I returned from my last scheduled trip (to Owosso, Michigan, for the curious), and now that the school year is complete, I’ll begin the editing phase. It’ll take me at least a month to finish the editing grunt work (chopping up footage we’ve already collected, transcribing it, etc.), and the more creative portion of this phase—assembling the cuts to tell the story—will likely take several more months on top of that.

We’ve collected somewhere around 150-200 hours of footage, which will ultimately be condensed into 90-100 minutes. It’s a gargantuan task for one person, especially when that one person has never done a feature-length film! Still, it can and will be done, and the only question is when it’ll be finished.

The executive producers of the film, Stuart Browning and Blaine Greenberg have been remarkably supportive throughout this process, and will undoubtedly be indispensable as we shepherd the film from the raw director’s cut that I’ll produce into the polished final cut.

Throughout this process, I will at times be unable to post to this site as frequently as I’d like. I’m not going on haitus like Andrew Sullivan tried—unsuccessfully—to do, but there will be some slowdowns in posting on occasion. Don’t worry or celebrate, though; when that happens, I’ll be back.

Lastly, the name of the new film will be Indoctrinate U. For a variety of reasons, keeping the name Brainwashing 101 would have complicated our marketing efforts, even though people are already familiar with that name. Also, using the same name would have restricted our options with film festivals. Any film submitted with the name Brainwashing 101 could have been considered already released or, in some cases, submitted previously. Thankfully, Blaine Greenberg, the resident twisted genius of On The Fence Films, came to the rescue with another great title, Indoctrinate U.

That’s the latest...I’ll let you know when there’s more to report.