History of the Project
As an aviation publisher frustrated with inconsistent regulation of competitors to his publishing constituency, Fred Gevalt sued the Federal Aviation Administration in 1998. He lost the suit, but managed to prevail politically, and the FAA was forced to write new regulation to accommodate the problem. This was his personal education about the capriciousness and irresponsibility of executive branch agencies and the damage they can do to commerce and society at large.
Upon the sale of his business in 2006 and departure as publisher in 2007, Gevalt began worrying about the unusual rise in influence and size of the Transportation Security Administration, the agency developed after 9/11 to provide airport security. He wanted to write a book. But realizing that documentary film has attained a significant following as entertainment and social commentary, he decided to film first, and write later. In recognition of the familiar airport process, both the film and the book are entitled “Please Remove Your Shoes.”
As a two-person crew, Gevalt and his daughter Emelie (and later Co-Producer Lorraine Pouliot) Please Remove Your Shoes criss-crossed the US many times for interviews of people from media and security experts to former air marshals, FAA security agents, and others.
After a year of initial documentary research and interviewing, however, it became clear that the topic of security was too complex to cover completely in a ninety-minute movie. Efforts to tell the TSA story bogged down with the “back stories” of the sociology of fear, economic impact, and media involvement. Gevalt found himself essentially writing a book “on camera.” He also realized that a stronger, simpler, and more dramatic story was necessary to retain the audience’s interest.
So the beginning of 2009 saw the project reignited with an expanded crew, including a writer, director, editor, and full production crew. Hiring Rob DelGaudio and BlackPearl Productions of Hopkinton, Massachusetts to take over the preproduction, production, and postproduction, the new organization decided to begin the filming all over with an emphasis on visuals, more dynamic interviews, and a story focus on the civil servants that FAA and TSA had employed through the period 1995 – 2005.
A new period of discovery has accompanied the second effort, with a drive to get to the bottom of TSA’s creation by Congress, and deep inside the heart of a bureaucracy that seems to care more about its public image than the mission it was charged to accomplish.
Please Remove Your Shoes looks at the way a key federal “super agency” was conceived, developed, and managed, as seen through the eyes of some very interesting and patriotic individuals who are in a position to know the truth.
The video discoveries of 2008, while more obscure, and often more abstract have not been put aside. They are often isolated (but related) discussions that fit concisely into a “chapterized” format. They have found the place where they really belonged in the first place: between two covers, on paper, and with a title of the same name as the movie: “Please Remove Your Shoes.” They will both be available in 2010.
