Daniel and the Towers

Daniel and the Towers (1987)

The story of Simon Rodia, the real-life artist who spent 30 years constructing Los Angeles' Watts Towers, a monument to Christopher Columbus, and his fictional relationship with Daniel, a young boy.

Date of release
1987-04-18
TMDB
5.5 / 10 (2)
Runtime
1h 1m
Genres
Drama, Family, TV Movie
Director
Paul Schneider

Casting

Interesting facts

Daniel and The Towers is a television film featuring the folk art masterpiece, the Watts Towers, in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The film was directed by Paul Schneider, and broadcast on PBS's WonderWorks children's anthology television series. It was released on VHS in 1992.

Background

Sam Rodia spent 33 years single-handedly creating the Watts Towers. He built the towers without any scaffolds, cranes or any hired help. He was also known as Simon Rodia, and inexplicably disappeared in 1954. He was later discovered to be living in a rooming house, and he died in a hospital in 1965. He never returned to the towers after building them.

The script was based on an UCLA doctoral thesis, research and imagination. During their research, the producers discovered that Rodia was a "cantankerous guy", who had a habit of yelling at people. The working title was "Ask Columbus", because of Rodia's fascination with Christopher Columbus, but they finally settled on Daniel and the Towers "to convey the program's theme more clearly and make a more direct reference to the story's unique setting…

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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