the difficult thing about leaving town to go shoot your film has to be the looming question of whether or not you will actually make it. for me i equate it to how an athlete must feel before the marathon or championship game. not that I really know what that's like but it seems there's a prerequisite of endurance and consistent focus. you have to be prepared of course and train well and 'get your head on straight'. but once it starts it starts and you are in it- so very in it. I had a hard time looking ahead and buying into that I would make it to the finish. almost two months on location across the country and shooting the entirety of the film in 18 short days....
leaving two children was definitely the hardest piece. and then once I landed it was brutally difficult to be apart from and distanced from my husband. he was enduring so much on the homefront and understandably well underwater and we had our own disconnectedness which was of course expected but still hard to navigate. you turn off a certain piece of yourself so you can make it through but you miss that part you turned off. there were many moments I wished I could turn to him for input or a keep going nudge and I wished I were there to give that to him.
the greatest gift was how well jack and molly did. with facetime I was able to see and connect with molly almost every single night and jack was always cheerful and happy when we saw each other. they were ok and that was reassuring on so many levels. nights were hard and any moment of quiet or off time- although few and far between my mind immediately went to them and wishing I could breathe them in and hold them. but I was ok and they were OK and the release that came from understanding this was really really good.
honestly, as a mom of two who has always worked hard to balance my creative life and work with being a present and active mom and wife it was a great gift to have the time and space to shoot the film out of town. i was able to re-discover pieces of myself. see how I was able to function in a group of peers- as a co-worker- not a co parent. it's funny how we can lose this along the way.
getting to make this film though- wow. it was a deeply moving experience. it was hard but not hard in an awful way- more the good challenging way that you grow and learn from. things almost fell apart but stayed intact- people got mad- I had to give up on things and fight hard for others. there were moments of self doubt and hurt feelings. how could there not be? we were building a story with so many pieces and moving parts and very few resources. and then there were amazing like really really fun times. i laughed really hard. harder than I have laughed in a while. we shot a stunt sequence! burned plywood! shot in a field in the middle of nowhere. i breathed in so many new people- relaxed into another family's home and life- explored and came to understand a new city. and at the end of all of this we did it. we completely did it! everyone showed up. an extraordinary and colorful cast- some who asked lots of questions and tested my storytelling and there were amazing insights and discoveries and beautiful funny performances. there were scenes that soared and simple things that lifted off the page and complicated things that played simple. there was lots and lots of magic. I found myself saying beautiful beautiful after takes I loved and nice nice. something in this one- that's where it always ended up. the pieces of the story revealed themselves over the weeks- funny and uplifting- grounded and moving- dramatic and tense. it will be fun to pull them all together and thread through this story.
more than anything today on this flight home to the sunshine and two kids with coughs and my amazing and surely overtired husband I am happy that I am happy to be going home. I mean- of course I am- but you have to stop and think about it for a beat every now and again. and really I just feel like the luckiest girl. to get to go off and make this film- this story that I spun up in my head out of nothing and also so much something and for all of the amazing collaborative visionaries who came in and brought it forward with me to this point- and the support of my friends and parents and in laws and family and mentors old and new. and my love, my best friend and partner who never ever stops believing in me and us no matter what. I've been given good things in my life and I am grateful for them and the hard work that brought me to them and this. and even though I am tired and nervous about the next steps and readjusting to getting back it's all ok- really ok. because I made it this far- you know?
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