Scott Roberts, now 53, moved to the small town of Platte City when he was nine. He came up through the Platte County R-III School District, fell in love with the dramatic arts, and flew off to UCLA to study them.
In 1998, the 27-year-old Roberts returned to Platte City and filmed and directed Letters Home over 16 days—but blew through the budget. He returned to Los Angeles and fought for funding, but he couldn’t get it, and the unedited film sat in storage in LA for over 20 years.
On Friday, Jan. 17, Letters Home be available to stream on Prime Video, Fandango at Home, and Plex.
Sixteen Days in 1998
Roberts’ peers in LA told him to start his career with a short film.
“Because I’m me and very stubborn, I was like, ‘No, I want to make a feature film,’” he says. “And then some kind, well-meaning people said, ‘Well, if you insist on doing that, please write what you know and try to keep it logistically doable.’”
So Roberts wrote what he knew: a story about Scott, a 9-year-old boy who moves to Platte City and falls in love with acting while a couple of girls fall in love with him.
The project came together “like a freight train,” says Roberts, and Platte City was on board. Since students were on break, the school district even gave his crew the run of the schools.
“We got the buses, all of it, and that helped with the budget a lot,” says Roberts. “But you still blow through it anyway.”
“And despite having all this incredible support from the community—all the resources, the location, all these people during a 16 day shoot in August of ‘98—I think the last five frames went through the camera as we were running out of resources and money.
“Everybody looked at me and went, now what? And I’m like, ‘Oh my god, I don’t know. We blew through everything.’ So that began the multi-decade journey.”
The White Whale
Roberts made a life in LA, then San Francisco, and then New York, shooting shorts, music videos, and documentaries along the way. Periodically, members of the cast and crew would check in on Letters Home, and he’d update them: Still no funding.
“It was my white whale,” says Roberts. “It just killed me that we had all this film sitting on a shelf in a warehouse in Hollywood. Raw film, ready to go, but no money to do anything with it. I would try to raise some money, and it was never enough, and the issue would go away again for a few years.”
But in late 2020, someone offered Roberts “a rock-bottom deal” to convert the film to 4K. “And I said, you know what, this is it. We’re in. Here we go at long last.”
The freight train started moving again. Roberts edited the footage he captured two decades prior, found a composer who was enthusiastic about scoring a film of this style, and then added the finishing touches. Then he took the 76-minute film on a tour of Kansas City-area film festivals from 2023 to 2024. Much of the original cast and crew reunited for the final showing at AMC Ward Parkway 14.
A Unique Opportunity
After Letters Home’s first festival appearance, it took on a new direction.
“Another filmmaker saw the film and said, ‘You have an incredible opportunity here. You have incredibly authentic historical footage, and you have the opportunity to comment on it from your present day self.’ And my brain just went, boom, and there was the narration.”
The new version, which finished out the festival circuit, begins with a flash forward to Irma, the girl who meets Scott at Platte City High School and seduces him every chance she gets.
Roberts’ narration begins: “Who would have thought that my life as a gay man would be so defined… by women?”
For the next hour and change, you can see 1998 in the film grain, in the cars and clothes and younger versions of Platte City landmarks. But you can feel Roberts—present-day Roberts—smiling back on a kid who still had a lot to learn about himself.
Letters Home streams on Prime Video, Fandango at Home, and Plex starting Friday, Jan. 17.