George’s Coffee Club Works to Keep The History of The Woodlands Alive With Two New Documentary Films

The Woodlands and its late founder George Mitchell will soon be showcased on the silver screen, with two documentary films in the works. Thanks to a Woodlands nonprofit, one film on George Mitchell and one on The Woodlands itself are in the works, pending funding.

George’s Coffee Club is a nonprofit founded in 2017 by Woodlands pioneers Roger Galatas and Tom Cox tasked with the mission to honor, respect and communicate original founder George Mitchell’s vision for The Woodlands.

“About two years ago, we were talking about The Woodlands history and preserving the history of The Woodlands in George’s Coffee Club,” member Bruce Tough says. “We have all the founders and the pioneers of The Woodlands and we just didn’t do it. And then Roger Galatas died, who was our president and our founding member. And then Tom Cox died, and then my dad (Coulson Tough) died, and then all of a sudden, everybody says, ‘Oh, we better get moving.’ “

The remaining George’s Coffee Club members felt that they were missing doing part of their mission, and members Bruce Tough, Steve Leakey and Nelda Blair started on the project in 2022.

“In terms of communicating, we were basically doing nothing,” Leakey says. “We went to Silver Rock (Productions) and I gave them a list of people that we have and said ‘Here’s what we were thinking about doing.’ And Mike (Huffine, of Silver Rock) said,  ‘Well we’ve been wanting to do a documentary on The Woodlands.’ “

So in 2022, the documentary started coming to life.

“We met at Silver Rock’s studios and decided we would get everybody we knew that either knew George Mitchell, worked for him, or had some role in the development and foundation of The Woodlands,” Tough tells PaperCity The Woodlands. “That’s how it started. We’re going to do video interviews and capture the history of The Woodlands.”

With the volume of material collected through interviews, two different films began to take shape.

“It went from that simple concept to we’re now going to do a documentary on The Woodlands and we’re going to do a documentary on George Mitchell,” Tough says. “So we’re going to do two documentaries.”

Blair and Tough have conducted 33 interviews to date, ranging from Mitchell family members to Mitchell’s early employees at what became The Woodlands Development Company. Most of the interviews have been shot with a green screen background at Silver Rock’s facility off Sawdust Road.

According to Huffine, each interview is outstanding and could stand alone, but they will all be woven into a story. After the final interviews are completed in the upcoming weeks, the next steps for the project involve taking the transcripts and creating a scripts for the documentaries. Loren Steffy, the author of a book on George Mitchell, is on tap to do the scripts for the films.

“We got gold every time we sat in that room,” Huffine says. “That makes Loren Steffy’s job pretty challenging. I think he’s gonna have a tough job. We want to create a documentary so that people can really get to know The Woodlands and the history, and the value of what George Mitchell built.”

The Mitchell Kids Are Involved

One of the standout interview sessions brought George and Cynthia Mitchell’s children into the mix and took place at the Mitchell family property at Cook’s Branch. Cook’s Branch Conservacy is a 7,100 acre habitat preservation project owned by the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation.

“That was pretty spectacular because they (the Mitchell children) don’t just get together, and they don’t get together on camera,” Huffine notes. “They come in once a year for their family meetings and we managed to get the majority of them. We got those personal interviews and it was that was just priceless.”

Post-productions is going to take some time with the green screen and developing the backgrounds, Huffine notes. “I want to create probably at least 15 different settings that I want to put these people in,” he says. “So that’s going to be a large undertaking to do just for post production.”

Huffine is also looking for archival footage and photos of the early days of The Woodlands.

“Once the story is written and we can see how we’re bridging conversations,” Huffine says. “What are my visuals? Are their old images? Historical, archival images? Those are tough to come by.”

George’s Coffee Club’s Mission

Huffine would welcome 8mm footage and images that community members might have on hand, through Silver Rock Productions.

“We’re doing this on no budget so nobody’s getting paid,” he says. “So it’s a passion project. And my team here, we’re all working on it.”

But because there is no funding, the Silver Rock team is only available when paying projects allow time. Estimates for funding to make these documentaries happen begin at about $150,000.

“If we can get a budget for it then I can bring it to the top of our production values, and I can put people on the production that can increase the production value,” Huffine says.

When complete, plans call for the documentaries to be available to stream, hosted on the George’s Coffee Club website and possibly other places.