With only $60,000, Newburgh-raised filmmaker Edward Crawford produced a movie that changed his life. 60 Miles North is based on his own journey in the entertainment industry, blending together the Hudson Valley and New York City chapters of his life. The feature film, which is now streaming on Amazon Prime, premiered at the 2022 Woodstock Film Festival and won the Audience Award. It also won Best of Festival at the Peeksille Film Festival in 2023. “I had no idea that it would pick up a life of its own, get the distribution that it did, and get out to the world the way it is,” he says.
Crawford grew up in Newburgh, 60 miles north of where he hustled to get his acting break in Manhattan. In the film, protagonist Clarence Moran, played by Crawford, and his friend Craig, played by Danny Doherty, dress up as Jesus and Dracula in Times Square trying to make ends meet between acting gigs. After Clarence loses a job as a game show host because of his background check, he moves back home with his parents and finds an unexpected renter in his childhood bedroom.
The movie was filmed between Manhattan and Newburgh, giving Crawford the opportunity to feature local spots in his hometown. “The Hudson Valley—they embrace you when you want to make a movie,” Crawford says. “They opened their doors to me,” There's a scene shot in Newburgh suit shop Broadway Tailors and another in Breath Of Life Wellness Center, a holistic spa.
The challenges of filming in Manhattan never stopped him from getting the scene he needed. When he couldn't obtain a permit to film in Central Park, he filmed in Downing Park in Newburgh instead, which coincidentally was also designed by the same duo, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. The experience was so positive, that Crawford raves: “I don't think I'll ever make a movie outside the Hudson Valley. This is my home, and I find inspiration everywhere.”
While this is his local directorial debut, Crawford has acted in the area. When he was living in New York City, he got small acting gigs like appearances on Blue Bloods and Down To The Bone, another movie filmed in the Hudson Valley starring Vera Farmiga. In 2005, Crawford was hired as the original host for Discovery Channel’s “Cash Cab.” After his background check came back showing a DWAI, he was let go from the show. He gave up the little hope he had for his acting career and moved back home, a sequence that sets the premise for the movie.
In the film, this is when Clarence meets Wild, the renter in his childhood bedroom. Played by Audrey Kovar, Wild is a young woman struggling with untreated Lyme disease, something that Crawford himself overcame. Originally, Wild’s character wasn't in the script, but later Crawford wrote her in as a friend for Clarence, basing the character off of himself and other female Lyme patients he met in treatment. “In my opinion, they're treated differently than the guys,” Crawford says. “I watched a doctor tell a woman you're too pretty to have Lyme, and it just shook me to the bone."
The two characters inspire each other to better themselves, and eventually Wild receives the care she needs for her neurological Lyme condition, and Clarence gets back out into the acting world. Instead of taking his parents advice and accepting his job at the railroad, Clarence goes back to New York City, and in a full circle move, decides to write a screenplay.
In real life, Crawford had his turning point watching a conductor as he was taking the train from Manhattan to Beacon. “I watched him say ‘tickets, tickets, tickets,’ and I sat in the seat, and I said to myself, is this what I'm going to do for the rest of my life?” he recalls. “I knew then I was supposed to be an actor or a filmmaker, and not a railroader.”
Today, Crawford has another screenplay which will be filmed in Newburgh next year, and has a role in an upcoming movie Dead Guy, which features A-list celebs like Eva Longoria, Michael Shannon, Judy Greer, and Luis Guzmán.
His message to other actors and filmmakers is simple, echoed in the films tagline: never give up hope. The loss of his “Cash Cab” role almost took away his passion for his craft. “Was I angry, and was I hurt? Sure, but I didn't give up, and I wrote 60 Miles North as a way of coming to terms with it,” he says. “If you're an actor, and the phone's not ringing, create something for yourself."
