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I Made A Short Film 10 Years Before #metoo.
It’s extra icky now.
In 2008 I wrote, directed and produced a short film based on a short story of mine. The story was inspired by a dinner I had with a relative and, after it was over, I went home entirely unsure that I had not been through a portal into a parallel universe. It was an evening that upended everything I thought I knew about this man, whom I had always seen as an avuncular, innocuous, if overly chatty guy.
Recently, while rummaging around in my digital content, I came across my short. I had not seen it in quite a while. Once you’re done with birthing such a project, after the shoot, the post-production, the festivals and the screenings, you think you know it all too well, and you can’t bear to see it one more time. It’s out in the world, and has a life of its own. I imagine it’s like when parents send their kids to college. They have become their own person, and they’re gone.
What compelled me to write a fictionalized version of my experience and then adapt the story to film was exploring what happens when subtext overtakes and upends a conversation. You think that you are talking about a certain topic, and it dawns on you that you’re not only talking about something completely different, but utterly unrelated. It’s not overt, and the real gist emerges in bits and pieces, popping up into the main…
