Fundraiser Aims To Bring L Train Documentary Over The Finish Line

L TRAIN CORRIDOR, NY — Like most L train commuters, Emmett Adler was shocked when Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that a 15-month shutdown of the subway line straphangers had been dreading for years wasn't going to happen.

He recognized how the countless hours elected officials, businesses, landlords and everyday New Yorkers had spent bracing for the shutdown were now marked with uncertainty.

But for Adler, the news came with another punch — the three years he had been working on a documentary about the halt of the transit line were also thrown into limbo.

"We were basically preparing to bring our film to the public when [Cuomo] intervened," Adler, the director of the film, said. "I was in shock. We had invested a lot of time at that point so we weren’t really sure what this meant, but we weren’t willing to drop it."

That shock had been a similar feeling to what launched Adler, who lives off the Montrose Avenue stop, into the documentary in the first place.

Back when the L train shutdown was announced in 2016, Adler said he almost immediately knew the "dramatic scenario" would make a great film.

"This was the type of story I was interested in — it had human struggles at the heart of it with businesses and residents that were going to feel dramatic impact," he said.

What he didn't know, was that the L train shutdown, and eventually the project that would call it off, would become a symbol of not only New York City's transit woes, but the entire country's.

The result is the documentary "The End of the Line," which uses the L train debacle as a jumping off point into what he calls a discussion about " the decline of America’s mass transit."

Adler and his team — all freelance filmmakers — are in the final stages of filming the documentary and are hoping a Kickstarter can raise the final $25,000 they need to "get it over the finish line."

The fundraiser, which has already brought in nearly $13,000 in just four days, will be used to interview the main players of the transit system like Mayor Bill de Blasio or Cuomo himself, and to get the final touches of back story for characters already in the film, Adler said.

The final push will ensure that the documentary doesn't just tell the New York story, but connects it to a national and international scope.

"This was a bigger story than just the L train — the L train was kind of like this straw that could break the camel’s back at the middle of it all," Adler said. "We think this could be the 'Food, Inc.' or the 'Inconvenient Truth' [of transit]. You take a complete assessment of where we’re at and how that’s not okay."

Find more about the film and how you can donate here.