After a seven-year court battle, independent Virginia-based film producers Gordon Price and James Person will soon release their highly-anticipated feature-length film, Crawford Road, on Fawesome. This historical thriller is the first collaborative effort produced by independent filmmakers Person and Price. The film is based on the true-crime Colonial Parkway murders of the 1980s and the century-old legend of nearby Crawford Road in Yorktown, Virginia.
Independent filmmaker Gordon Price was fined for filming parts of his horror movie Crawford Road in Colonial National Historical Park without a permit, sparking a First Amendment challenge to the permit system. In the 2021 case of Price v. Barr, a U.S. District Court ruled in Price’s favour, stating that the permit requirements violated free speech protections, especially for creators with minimal environmental impact. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the ruling in 2022, arguing that filmmaking itself wasn’t inherently a communicative activity protected under the First Amendment. The court held that although some portions of the national park system are public forums, a public forum analysis does not apply to filmmaking. Following the appellate court’s decision, the National Park Service (NPS) rescinded its interim guidance and reinstated the requirement for permits for commercial filming.
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