One of the best things about getting sick has been how it slowed me down and left me a lot of time to consider and to rethink ROAD TO HELL. I've always been one to try to keep evolving my films, but being ill forced me to focus on getting better and not my movies. For the first time in my life, I was not making or thinking about a movie I had made. I was forced to think about, well, me and my health and family. When I started feeling better I revisited the latest version of ROAD TO HELL (version November 2013). I was also deeply changed by the loss of Chiba and Nobu. I was a different person and my outlook on life had changed. So when I looked at ROAD TO HELL after so long away from it and now with different eyes and views, I really saw how to improve it so the movie would reflect who I was now and how I had changed. I traveled my own road to hell and, like Cody, came out on the other side a different person. I went back and re-read all the comments and critiques of previous versions and let them sink in. I had the benefit of 6 months of reflection and consideration. As I was going through all these opinions, my spirits were lifted. As a side note, my doctor at the time thought I showed enough depression tendecies to be suicide risk. I had to meet with a therapist for the first time in my life. But in that talk, I talked about filmmaking and what it meant to me. What I had sacrificed to do it. I realized as that talk went on, that ROAD TO HELL reflected my own life journey. That I had to bring more of that into the film as if it were a song or novel. Where a creator brings their own life journey into it. I had the luxury due to a very loving and supportive group of friends and family, of not having to need the movie to be a financial or critical success. I only needed the movie to do the one thing all the medicine and treatment in the world couldn't...heal my soul. So what people will see, first in Las Vegas and then in LA will be a film that is deeply personal and reflects my own journey. Yes, many of the characters and incidents are metaphors for what has happened in my life. But the more I work on ROAD TO HELL now, the more I see that. I hope audiences respond, but if they don't, well, its the movie I needed to make. I am spending more money on this last version and screening this version than I can ever make back, but in the end, its not about dollars and cents or success, its about healing for me. I do it also to honor those most important to me, my parents...and Chiba and Nobu. ROAD TO HELL goes along ways to healing my heart over their loss. And as these pics show, both were always ready to accompany me down the road, no matter where it took us. Chiba and Nobu knew, the destination didn't matter as long as the journey was with their Dad. I feel the same way about ROAD TO HELL. Its all about the journey...together. - Albert.
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