Dearest Readers,
It is late 2017. Del Mar, California, a displaced New Yorker. I am drunk, sitting on the floor of the bathroom at 2 am in a hotel room I share with my 7 yr old daughter. We have been demented roommates, alone, with two twin beds and room for little else, for months. I didn’t know it yet, but there would be 5 more months to go. There in the bathroom, it seems like it will go on forever. This is my life now! Seeking treatment for a serious and frustrating illness. Her doctors and therapists are constantly telling me what a vital part of her treatment I am. All of my energy, soul and brain is taken up with the seemingly impossible task of getting her well. She lies in bed, asleep, just beyond the bathroom door. Her medical machine is whirring. I love her more than I can express, that is a given. But I also hold an existential terror inside that makes me feel like I am disappearing. I’m having a panic attack-- who am I here? If my entire existence is focused on my daughter...where did I go? Where do I go from here? What will be left of me when this is over? Will this ever be over? Did I cause this? How do I fix it? Am I doing enough? Am I a failure? Do I exist at all? Does she hate me? What was I put on this earth to do?
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I pace in the little league field that is inexplicably behind the hotel. I look up at my window. If my daughter wakes up will I hear her? I sit in the grass in the dark and think about all the stories in films and television that have been told about what happens when a woman falls apart. I can’t think of one that felt authentic to me at that moment, that would reflect back to me that I am not alone, that someone out there understood this ineffable, absolutely absurd, terrifying feeling enough to commit it to film. That a woman did. That someone sees and hears me. I laugh so hard I start to cry because actually, I can’t think of any such films at all.
No one tells those stories about those women. Fully dimensional portraits of women who feel they can’t do it, are traumatized by expectations and circumstances, who know deep in their soul that doing it for one more second will cause them to disappear into the ether, never to be seen again and to no consequence other than absolute inconvenience to everyone who was depending on her. Stories of the complete ridiculous absurdity of life’s heaviest moments when we are invited to laugh with an imperfect, difficult, complicated woman because just when she thinks things can’t get any worse, they do and we are on her side because we are in her head. |
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And then I look up at the moon and decide that no one has told this story because it’s me that was meant to tell it. I go back inside the bathroom and night by night dream this whole film up. The results are a surreal, horrifying, blackly funny portrait of a mother simultaneously kicking against and coming to terms with her maternal instincts. I believe it is a story of motherhood we haven't seen on screen before in a form that defies genre and subverts expectations to deliver a wholly new experience for the audience. |
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From starting to write the film to writing this letter to all you dear readers and future viewers, it has been 8 years. My blood, sweat, tears, and hands were used to make this film with a wonderful team of collaborators who bought into my fully formed vision. I will never be able to express enough gratitude to thank them. It is completely out of my hands now and that is the power of film. It is a communication. I invite you to receive it, to find yourself in it (because even if it isn’t obvious, you my friends are all in there), and to laugh, cry, and gasp when it strikes you. I will now step away and give this film to those who need it. Here you are! Come to the dark theater and revel in all of it.
Here’s to happy viewing,
Mary
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