"We're honored and grateful to Kickstarter for providing fans of 'Blue Like Jazz' a way to directly fund a movie they want to see,” comments the film’s director, Steve Taylor, who was recently quoted in Variety’s feature discussing crowdfunding . “Four months ago our movie was dead for lack of money, despite five years of effort to bring it to the screen. Now we're here in Portland filming the final scenes this week, thanks to thousands of backers from across the country and around the world. We wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for Kickstarter and the extraordinary efforts of the two fans that led the campaign - Zach Prichard and Jonathan Frazier.”

Principal photography on the movie will wrap this weekend in Miller's adopted hometown of Portland, Ore., with locations including Reed College, the setting for most of the film, and Powell's Books. "Blue Like Jazz" also shot in Nashville in late 2010.

Marshall Allman (“True Blood,“ Prison Break”) is playing the lead role of Donald Miller. Tania Raymonde (“Lost,” “Crash”), Justin Welborn (“Final Destination,” “The Crazies”) and Claire Holt have also been cast. The movie, directed by Steve Taylor, is being produced by Clarke Gallivan (Ruckus Film) and filmed by cinematographer Ben Pearson.

Miller’s Blue Like Jazz has sold 1.3 million copies to date, and the writing of the movie’s screenplay was highlighted in his latest New York Times Bestseller A Million Miles In A Thousands Years.

For updates on the making of the movie, stay tuned to www.bluelikejazzthemovie.com.

More information on Donald Miller:
Donald Miller grew up in Houston, Texas, in the shadow of the Astrodome. He left Houston at 21 in a Volkswagen van, and later wrote a book about his trip called Through Painted Deserts. In his travels, he ran out of money in Portland, Oregon where he audited classes at Reed College, then selected as the most godless campus in the country. He wrote a book about that experience called Blue Like Jazz that eventually became a New York Times Bestseller and is now being made into a movie. Don then followed up with the best-selling Searching for God Knows What. After thirty-years of no interaction with his father, Don found his biological dad and wrote about it in a book called Father Fiction. About that time, he started The Mentoring Project, an organization that seeks to respond to the American crisis of fatherlessness by inspiring and equipping faith communities to mentor fatherless boys. Don’s work with The Mentoring Project led the Obama administration to invite him onto the Presidential Task Force on Fatherhood and Healthy Families. Last year, along with the Ride: Well Team, Don rode his bicycle across America in an effort to raise money to drill wells in Sub-Saharan Africa. This experience, along with the writing of the screenplay for Blue Like Jazz, provided material for his newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years (also a New York Times Bestseller). He has appeared at such diverse events as The Democratic National Convention and the Vertias Forum at Harvard. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his dog Lucy. More information can be found at http://donmilleris.com/ and http://twitter.com/donmilleris.

More information on Steve Taylor:
Filmmaker Steve Taylor earned his “Renaissance Man” stripes (Prism Magazine) from a uniquely diverse body of work. As a recording artist he’s sold over one million albums worldwide, earned two Grammy nominations for Meltdown (1984) and Squint (1993), and made history as the only artist to twice win Billboard Music Video Awards for self-directed music videos. Steve was also lead singer/co-writer in the MCA-signed modern rock band Chagall Guevara. His producer resume includes the Platinum-certified Sixpence None The Richer (featuring the hits “Kiss Me” and “There She Goes”), three Gold-certified albums for Newsboys, and tracks for Relient K and Third Day. In 1997 Steve launched Squint Entertainment, whose worldwide success in the pop music arena was a first for a Nashville-based label. In addition to Sixpence, Squint’s roster included Chevelle, Burlap To Cashmere, and hip-hop collective L. A. Symphony. Steve’s parallel career as a filmmaker began in college and includes his video for Sixpence’s “Kiss Me,” the long-form Newsboys comedy Down Under The Big Top, and the award-winning Squint: Movies From The Soundtrack. 2006 marked the release of Steve’s debut as a feature film director/writer/producer with The Second Chance, an award-winning drama that was distributed theatrically by Sony Pictures Releasing. He’s currently in post-production on his next movie, an adaptation of Donald Miller’s million-selling memoir Blue Like Jazz. Steve lives in Nashville with his wife, the artist D.L. Taylor, and their daughter.

For more info on Steve Taylor, visit the JFH Artists Database.