The feature-length documentary about Sam Rodia and the Watts Towers of Los Angeles
“You got to do something they never got
‘em in the world.”— Sam Rodia
Edward Landler and Brad Byer
Edward Landler received a B. A. in Literature and Film under the supervision of film historian Jay Leyda at Yale University, and learned also from discussions and production experience with Satyajit Ray in India and Luis Buñuel in France. Later, in Los Angeles, he found work on independent feature films in various crew positions and was mentored in his screenplay writing by retired Hollywood writer/director Delmer Daves. In 1979, he became involved with the Watts Tower Arts Center and completed his first film, Pharaoh’s Dream, in 1981. Shot in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) and Los Angeles, this 16mm experimental short won honorable mention at the Anthropos Film Festival. A year later, he met the grandson of Sam Rodia’s sister.
Brad Byer had graduated from the University of California, Davis, with a Bachelor’s degree in English. He remembered his “Uncle Sam” always arguing with his grandmother’s husband in Martinez in the San Francisco Bay area. After college, while working as a writer and editor for the U. S. Forest Service, he went to see the Watts Towers for the first time and started to research his great-uncle’s life to learn how an uneducated man could create such an extraordinary work. Uncovering substantial documentation, Byer relocated to Los Angeles to turn his project into a film.
The filmmakers started working together to make I Build the Tower in 1983, filming the last recorded interview with R. Buckminster Fuller who provided a structural analysis of Rodia’s Towers. In 1989, their project was awarded a production grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and also received funding from the Olivetti Corporation.
While they were making the movie, Byer worked in real estate and started a licensed home and office moving business. Landler supported himself teaching story writing workshops in elementary schools, drama workshops in middle schools, video workshops in high schools, and film history and production courses at California State University, Northridge, and UCLA Extension.
Completing the documentary in 2006, their efforts have become part of the history of the Towers and the Watts community. Byer passed away in 2013.