The Kickstarter is live! Go go go!
Today’s newsletter, in which Laser (our campaign manager and smartest-most-talented-person-alive) asks Izzy way-too-meaningful questions to get her to cry about this whole thing:
Laser: Hi friend! what does it mean to you to be making your first feature film right now?
Izzy: I feel stupidly lucky. I’m lucky for the outrageously talented people I get to call friends, lucky to be born and live in LA my entire life, lucky to be born into the family I have, with money, an education, food, the internet, a home, in this time in history—this is an amount of luck that perplexes me to think about.
I ironically don’t believe in any kind of magical phenomena, be it ghosts, god, astrology (sorrrryyyyy), afterlife, mediums, d*bbuks, what-have-you. I really only believe that there is luck and there are stories.
After my dad died, there was nothing more I wanted on earth than to feel some sort of presence greater than me, any way to feel my dad—good or bad, as any means of comfort. I thought about going to a psychic, reading the bible, ((((eating his ashes???? [[[[I didn’t do it!!!!]]]])))), anything to feel something.
It was ironic because my dad was a staunch atheist. But what ended up giving me back my will to go on after losing my dad, were stories! Stories of him. At the risk and pride of sounding gay as hell, stories are magic. It’s what makes people feel. Fuck it—I think stories are what made human beings evolve the way we did.
Memories are really the stories we tell ourselves in order to live (shoutout JD). I went from grieving a complicated man I had a painful relationship with to celebrating someone, not despite, but because of, his flaws. I heard stories about how he saved people’s lives in AA, heard about the insane date nights that turned into entire week-long trips with my mom, remembered how he nurtured my feelings while inspiring me to test fearlessness. I was able to reshape my perception of my dad with the stories and memories made, born out of grieving him. I had the greatest privilege of my life turning that journey into this movie.
Laser: What will it mean to you if the Kickstarter is funded and you are able to finish the movie? What does it mean to you that you are able to ask an audience for help and expect some support?
Izzy: If I’m able to do that here with this campaign, it will be my greatest achievement of my career, probably no matter what happens after this ((((edit this if I somehow end world hunger later in life)))). I don’t think art should be left to be picked up by a massive corporation that can choose whether or not something gets made or shown to the public based on whether they can get tax cuts.
I think what we’re seeing with direct-to-artist platforms is one of the more uplifting movements I’ve seen since I started making things. Thank you to every single person that has read any part of these letters for letting me be part of a system like that: for artists, by artists. Thank you to every single person who has helped me to make this movie. If we don’t make a single cent, it will still have been worth it (but, please, can I have at least one penny for the sake of this letter?). Because everyone deserves to tell their story, I just got really, really lucky.
Love you Laser,
Iz