So … hey!!! Let’s start at the beginning.
You may remember, there was a lot of time over the various periods of lock down to do a lot of different things. Here’s what I decided to do: find out I’m severely allergic to mold by buying a humidifier, start taking anti-psychotics (cool/normal), write, feel AMAZING about what I’m writing, HATE everything I’ve written, and then finally write again after stealing a movie idea from my mom that I make about me.
During this period of complete mental and physical stability, I also read “Rebel Without A Crew” by Robert Rodriguez, who tells the story of his filmmaking journey by using anything at his disposal to make movies. After churning out a 110-page action-comedy that involved a helicopter flying into a building, I thought—maybe I should take his advice and make something a little more practical.
So, I committed myself to adapting an idea from my mom about seeing my recently-deceased dad in mirrors after he died, and making it possible to film. My mom was in the middle of working on pitches (a horrible experience) to television executives (somehow worse) and said I could take her idea. I took events from my dad’s actual passing and turned it into a surreal ghost story with a lot of stupid jokes and then a few years, after getting married, getting pregnant and having a baby…the movie was written!
I wrote several drafts that were utter trash, but thankfully I have been blessed with undeserved luck and a cadre of insanely brilliant writers and comedians around me at all times. I very much did not write this movie alone. A few weeks before “go time,” on the last day of his paternity leave, my husband, Brennan, helped me do a full rework of the movie, cutting (I want to say but am ashamed to say) 20 scenes. THANK GOD. In addition to being the Greatest Dungeons and Dragons Player On Earth (true), he also went to film school and helped immensely with my and my mom’s recurring issue of “This does not need to be in the movie just because it happened in your life and you think it’s interesting,” which although rude, is true a lot of the time. We had full family rewrite sessions with the baby.
So, the movie is called D(E)AD. It is pronounced like “dead” but I was EXTREMELY clever and original and put the parentheses around the “e” because then it’s like “dad” too. IT’S COOL!!!! It’s about a dead dad coming back to haunt everyone in his family except for his youngest daughter. I was extremely influenced by Little Miss Sunshine (screenwriter Michael Arndt has a bunch of videos about screenwriting that I watch over and over and over when I’m writing), Flirting With Disaster (my mom showed this to me when I was probably 9 years old and that is too young but I guess it ended up benefitting her cuz here I am campaigning for our movie). These are strong, family-centered movies with HARD laughs and upsetting themes–AKA Jewish screenwriter heaven. What they lack is magic, which is wrong. Every movie should have magic in it. That’s why Everything Everywhere All At Once is perfect.
Next up: pre-production — completely stress-free (spoiler: it’s not).
Thank you so much for being here to follow this D(e)ad journey. It is my greatest wish that this film is something you enjoy, and that we keep getting to make things that matter to us!
Izzy
PS: if you want to help us spread the word, please forward this email to a friend or reply and tell us the name of your favorite indie movie!