Lost in Woonsocket revisited

On the front page of today's Providence Journal, the daily newspaper in Rhode Island, is an article on the upcoming screening of Lost in Woonsocket on May 12. An excerpt:

Our story starts in a tent in the woods of Woonsocket.
Here, Normand Cartier lives -- homeless, alcoholic and disconnected from his
family.
Fast forward two years. The story gets better.
Cartier's on a plane. He's flying to Texas, California, Florida and Iowa. He's attending film festivals and speaking to crowds that invariably rise to their feet, fight back tears, and applaud -- not necessarily for what Cartier says, but for what he does: simply show up.

The great thing about spirituality and transformation is its viral nature - natural viral expansion, not like the impersonal electronic kind that Internet 2.0 propagates, but more traditional and community-oriented and personal, with real tears, real hugs and real connection.

I am flying to Rhode Island next week to attend the screening with the expectation that I will get to experience this transformation first-hand and I am convinced that the world will be improved ever so slightly by this gathering. I have a feeling that Woonsocket will never be the same again. I already know that I won't be.

If we all did one thing to try to make this world a better place, it would, by the very attempt, become one. Isn't that the kind of world we want to leave to our children and grandchildren?

-Brian

Lost in Woonsocket

SYNOPSIS: Lost in Woonsocket is a story of hope, miracles, and the painful reality of addiction. In 2005, a group of filmmakers from the A&E series Random1, come across two homeless alcoholics, Mark and Normand, living in a tent, literally on the edge of society. Hopeless and out of touch with their families for years, the two nonetheless maintain a strong bond of friendship. John and Andre break the rules of the show to get Mark into detox, a halfway house, and hopefully -- a life of sobriety. In their effort to get Mark cleaned up they pick a friendly barber out of the phone book who turns out to know the hard truth about what it takes to stay clean. When the episode runs in the fall of 2005, an avalanche of E-mails from the audience want to know why John and Andre didn’t help Normand as well. Their answer that day was that they could only help one and Mark seemed the more willing candidate. Then the bombshell arrives. An E-mail from a man named Timothy saying he is Normand’s son. He and the rest of the family has watched Mark’s R1 episode and sees their father for the first time in 13 years. He is asking where the R1 crew was when they filmed the episode. Normand’s family wants to find their father and take him in from the harsh New England winter.

The R1 crew changes direction and goes back to Woonsocket to find Normand and reunite him with his family. What ensues is an unlikely set of coincidences that as everyone says later, had to be directed by a higher source. What is revealed is the moment of surrender every person struggling with addiction must face.

If the life of an addict were only that simple, the story would have had a happy ending, but after the R1 show is no longer on television, a call from Pastor Brian brings the principle characters in Mark and Normand’s story back together again in a rainy Woonsocket parking lot. Someone has fallen. Up close and unflinching in its raw honesty, the moments of pathos, humor, and grace continue to unfold as this story of addiction and redemption in America plays out to its surprising conclusion.

Lost in Woonsocket has three upcoming screenings:

April 23rd - Newport Beach, CA
May 12th - Woonsocket, RI
May 19th - Jacksonville, Fla
June 24th - Austin, TX

We're looking to release this as a DVD for wide distribution before the end of the year. More news to come on this. See more information at www.lostinwoonsocket.com

-Brian