Hi Lauren,
This is an invitation to become an Executive Producer for All Is Well — a comedy about Alzheimer’s, grief, and show cats in the Catskills in 1977 — as the only other person I know living on the axes of comedy, film, and Alzheimer's.
GRIEF-INTEGRATED
My dad saw me in systems, in goals — he saw my ambition.
Saw me in sarcasm — sardonic wit. Perspective shift. Ambitious Jest.
He's in late stages of Early Onset Alzheimer's now.
I don’t see any of him any more. I don’t know who that man is.
I can’t connect through systems or goals or ambition or sarcasm or wit anymore. Our connecting tissue is frayed.
The film development process itself is a grief support process.
Systems + comedy is how I know him and I'm letting those hold me through all the rest.
NEURODIVERGENT-LED
Being autistic + ADHD makes daily life hard.
Filmmaking is an accommodation, necessity, a form of accessible maintenance and agency.
Filmmaking helps me communicate in a way that actually makes sense
+ connect with others while feeling at home in the world.
I want to make this movie my job.
CONSENSUAL CULTURE
I’ve restructured my relationships to time, space, money, and support to be genuinely supportive and consensual.
I am living within a system of post-coercion.
When consent is rooted into the film at all stages,
We generate a moving system that functionally demonstrates consensual practices work
— and should be standard.
When we invest in consensual processes, we create consensual culture.
THE ASK
I’m asking for $50,000 to support the next 10 months of development on All Is Well.
This funding provides me with clear, grounded time to write, rest, and remain present with this process without scattering my attention to make ends meet.
I’m reaching out to you as someone who understands:
- the weight of long-term anticipatory grief,
- the full filmmaking process, and
- the unnecessary toxicity baked into the dominant film industry.
I’m inviting you to partner with me in directing a standard of respect for grief, disability, and consent in the film industry.
Your work through Hilarity for Charity, your caregiving story, and commitment to honest storytelling around Alzheimer’s has been a steady light I’ve looked to over the years.
I see All Is Well as a sister project to the work you are already doing and would love to add you as an Executive Producer to this film — with involvement as hands on or off as you’re desiring.
THE MOVIE
It’s 1977, and some shit is going down.
It’s a cat show, very serious, very important. Set at a B-grade resort in the Catskills at the same time as a new age spiritual convention.
Our protagonists are semi-celebrities in the Long Island cat show scene.
The Cat Fancier show in the Catskills serves as a perfect opportunity to have a family vacation with their grown kids and quickly, secretly, sell their top stud for a shitton of money to get them out of a financial hole—
The dad lost his law license and partnership at a Manhattan law firm.
He has Alzheimer’s. The grown kids don’t know how to process it. The family has so far only pretended all is well.
Midway through their plan, the stud cat dies. The parents have to fess up. The kids crack, not because the cat dies, but because of the lies.
They decide to stick to the plan anyway and take the cat to a taxidermist. Maybe no one will notice?
It’s got some Little Miss Sunshine, Best In Show, a flavor of Scorsese-mafia underground show cat business. Slightly Jewish / Slightly Catholic with a heavy hand of new age spiritual bypassing. A summer fling the daughter believes is the whole thing. It’s a bit unhinged.
It’s a movie about my family. A mix of my parents, my grandparents, and my own story. Grief, humor, and silently dysfunctional families finally splitting at the seams.