ABC News Plays A Role In The Making Of Indie Film, "FREE to a Good Home"

ABC News segment highlights an animal rescuer while animal rescuer and USC Screenwriting Grad Student watches and is inspired to make feature film.

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) April 4, 2005 -- FREE to a Good Home," a gritty new movie about a girls fight to save homeless animals by director Judy Crozier (USC Grad Alum), will hold a fundraising screening Saturday, April 9th at Raleigh Studios, 5300 Melrose Avenue, Hollywood, CA 90038 at 2PM and 8PM, tickets are $25. The making of the film has become what could be an astounding urban legend. The Director returned from filming one night to find her home ravaged by fire. Five animals perished. Crozier received one blaring sign to press on through her grief. The sole surviving animal, a cat, shares a distinctive trait with the lead actress, Katherine Norland, who has one blue eye and one hazel eye. And though all of Croziers personal belongings were destroyed, the film miraculously survived.

ABC News has played a large role in the making of FREE to a Good Home". In 2000 ABC News featured a story on animal rescuer Sherri Stankewitz and her rescue group Sparky and the Gang. The piece described how Stankewitz would rescue strays from the streets of Los Angeles, clean them up and adopt them out to a fabulously loving family. Crozier was finishing her double major master in screenwriting wondering why someone in Hollywood had not done something already to highlight this enormous problem with animal overpopulation. Had no one in Hollywood witnessed what Crozier witnessed? She had picked up strays off the 110 freeway as well as local streets and she wondered, didnt anyone else in Hollywood who had more power also stumble across these strays? Crozier had been making notes determined to write a story to highlight the problem, when she caught the ABC NEWS Segment. Crozier taped the ABC footage and used it to loosely base her main character on Sherri. A few months later she attempted to find Stankewitz to no avail, numbers were disconnected the website was down. ABC had no contact info. Then one day, over a year later, after Crozier was screening dailies from filming at a Best Friends Super Adoption event in the La Brea Tar Pits Crozier saw the Sparky and the Gang sign in her footage. Immediately she contacted Best Friends and finally was able to get in touch with Sherri Stankewitz.

They met, Sherri helped with the filming of some scenes and since then the two have become great friends. Crozier and Stankewitz will both be at the Screening on April 9th.

FREE to a Good Home" is a coming of age journey of self-realization because of a girls commitment to animals. Through the protagonists experiences, this film provides an insiders view of Animal Control, as well as the daily lives of the people committed to rescuing the animals.

Ultimately, the film offers compelling solutions to resolve this ongoing problem of animal overpopulation and abuse. Footage from this groundbreaking piece has already aired throughout Asia, recently some footage has been used in a commercial for In Defense of Animals (IDA) and the Doris Day Animal League (DDAL) used other footage to help the passage of legislation. The film while still in rough-cut form has received high praise. The fundraising is to obtain final picture lock and professional sound mixing.

See the trailers online at http://www.freetoagoodhomemovie.com . For further information, contact freetoagoodhome [at] aol [dot] com or call 310.492.5569.

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