*Trigger Warning* This is a very sad, true story about a friend who committed suicide on New Year’s Day, and my grieving process. It might be upsetting for some people. If you or someone you know has been experiencing suicidal thoughts or ideations, please reach out to someone who can help. Here is a link with resources located around the world: http://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

2013

On New Year's Day, 2013, before sunrise, my friend Jimmy and I took a walk. At the time, I had no way of knowing that in just two years, he would bid the world goodbye. I’ve often returned to the memory of this night/morning as if I’m someone rewatching an old movie and searching for hidden symbolism. 

The memory of this walk, in particular, seems like something from a past life—perhaps because I’ve returned to it so often, and have tried so desperately to remember as much of it as I could. 

What I can recall is this: Jimmy walked me from a party at his house (called “The Bro-Thel”) to our friends’ house where I was crashing (called “Downtown Coolsville”). 

I had shoulder-length platinum blonde hair at the time. I wore a silver dress and a tiny celebratory tophat, along with a pair of thick-framed hipster glasses. Jimmy was wearing my Indiana Jones-esque hat and a biker jacket. 

As we walked, he told me all about the play he was writing, called “Diary of a Dead Man,” and I told him about the script I was working on, which he urged me to finish. He loved the idea, and the premise, and even had an idea for the ending. 

For years, I struggled to remember which unfinished script of mine we talked about that night. But whatever it was, he got very excited about it indeed, to the point where he was inspired to loudly exclaim that we would both be famous writers one day. 

He stopped at one point, in the middle of the street, and shouted it out to the heavens. “We’re gonna be famous!” he bellowed. (“Happy New Year!” somebody yelled back.)

As we neared Downtown Coolsville, he continued, saying that we would change the world. I distinctly remember walking up the exterior metal stairway and hearing him yell out from the parking lot “You’ll see, Mig! It’s going to happen!” 

I turned to see him standing in the middle of the parking lot, dancing to whatever song the neighbors were playing. His moves involved lots of side-to-side head movements and finger-guns. It ended in a flourish, with him scooping the hat off of his head and holding it up to the sky in a very Mary Tyler Moore-inspired moment. 

“We're destined for greatness,” Jimmy said, “and you can't fight Destiny!"

And with that, he either flung my hat toward me like a frisbee and I caught it perfectly with a clever response, OR I jokingly told him to go home and went inside. I don’t remember which thing actually happened, but I like to think it was the first one. 

There were many things I didn’t know at the time. I didn’t know about his fascination with death. I didn’t know about his dark past or how it would come to haunt my future. 

2014

By New Year's Day, 2014, a lot had transpired. Jimmy had left Ashland and returned to his hometown in Washington, and I had moved into his old room at The Bro-Thel. I was not speaking to him. 

The story of why I wasn’t speaking to him is deeply personal, and I don’t feel right talking about it here. But an important component of the story was that he had told me and several of our friends, over the summer, that he was dying of a medical condition, only to later tell us that he had told us this because he had been planning to take his own life. 

At the time, there was a part of me that really felt like this was the universe punishing me. I’d always been an overly imaginative child who told elaborate tall tales, and there were many instances in the past when I lied to impress people. These included me pretending to be from foreign countries to test out various accents, me making up stories about landing roles in movies, and all sorts of things I now cringe to think about.  

Of course, now I realize that’s incredibly self-centered. But there was no telling 2014 Mig that. 2014 Mig believed that the world revolved around her various personal tragedies and heartbreaks, but that she would persevere by transforming all of them into magnificent works of art. 

And of course, 2014 Mig didn’t believe Jimmy was really going to do it. Obviously he just wanted the attention. Obviously he had just been lying to us to get sympathy. Obviously this would all blow over and we’d all be friends again, someday in the distant future when I would obviously get over it. 

Obviously, right? 

So when, on New Year’s Day, 2014, Jimmy texted me "Happy New Years" with at least five exclamation points, I didn't respond.

But I did think to myself how much I desperately wanted to prove him right about at least one thing: that whatever he wanted to do with his life, that I was going to be famous one day. 

Like I said, 2014 Mig was maaaybe a little self-centered. 

2015  

On New Year's Day, 2015, I saw Jimmy’s last Facebook status, in which he said that his New Year’s Resolution was to always “embrace love.”  

Since the year before, I had come much closer to forgiving Jimmy, but it was hard to do. He had returned to Ashland and had tried to reconcile with me and many of our friends. Some of us were more willing than others to reach out to him. 

He had asked me several times if I wanted to go for a walk. I kept making excuses as to why I couldn’t. I avoided him on our college campus whenever I saw him. 

By the time I finally had worked up the nerve to ask him if he wanted to finally go for that walk, he had moved back to Washington. 

I saw him one last time in November, when he came down to Ashland for a weekend to record some ADR (voiceover work, essentially) for a short film we’d made, which was still in post-production.  

He looked very different. He was an odd combination of seeming both very gaunt and depleted but somehow incredibly happy--the happiest I think I’d seen him since that first New Year’s Party. 

We spent the day just acting as if we were old friends and that nothing bad had ever happened. We never talked about the elephant in the room. That elephant followed us all around town that day, but we were able to outrun it at every turn. We talked about dinosaurs, One Piece, giraffes, and the only argument we had was about whether strawberries are a necessary addition to waffles. 

More friends eventually joined up with us as the day progressed, and he slipped out without saying goodbye. 

That was the last time I’d ever see him in person.  

I never got closure for the things I was upset with him about. I never got to tell him how upset I was that he had lied to all of us, but especially me. (2015 Mig was maybe still a liiiittle self-centered.) 

But I did get something that, maybe, in a way, was better than closure. I got to spend one last day hanging out with my friend.  

And I didn’t appreciate it enough at the time. 

So when, on New Year’s Day 2015 came, and I saw his Facebook status saying that he wanted to always embrace love, I thought it was pretentious and rolled my eyes, not knowing that we'd never get a status from him again. Not knowing that he was already gone. That it had been him saying goodbye.

2016 

On New Year’s Day, 2016, I was still living in The Bro-Thel in Jimmy’s old room. It had been one year since he died, and three years since he told me we’d find greatness. 

New Year’s Day has never been the same for me. 

That year, my New Year's Resolution is to try to finish that play I told him about on that night in 2013, and try to find the greatness he said was my destiny.

Because, as he’d always said in so, so, SO many conversations over the years... 

“Somebody has to.”

2017

I spent New Year’s Day of 2017 sick in bed. I still lived in Jimmy's old room with his Pathfinder books on the shelf and his firefighter boots in the corner. 

I had maintained a yearly tradition of sharing a Facebook memory of us at the New Year’s party in 2013. Looking at this picture again in 2017, I was profoundly struck by what an enabler 2013 Mig had been. That whole weekend, he had been acting so strange. He’d been saying such disturbing things, and instead of seeing the warning signs, I took out the camera.

2018 

New Year’s Day 2018 started with a disagreement between me and some friends. Then I saw that picture of me and Jimmy from 2013 pop up in Facebook memories and remembered how short life is.  

At that point, I had completely forgotten which play Jimmy told me I should finish on that walk. So I decided I’d better write all of them just to make sure. 

2019

On New Year’s Day, 2019, I realized the play that Jimmy had wanted me to write was “The Diminished” (although it wasn’t called that at the time).  

I had spent the last several months having a hellish time trying to get it made as a movie and wound up with a short film. A lot of things about the story started to make sense when I remembered that New Year’s Day walk in the wee hours of that morning in 2013. 

Jimmy had loved the idea of the lead character taking their own life to stop the bad guy. Maybe what Jimmy did was his own version of that. I named one of the characters in the movie after him without making the connection. 

Due to logistical problems and some lessons about my shortcomings as a director that I had to learn the hard way, the ending that Jimmy had loved so much was never filmed. Maybe it’s better that way.

2020

New Year’s Day, 2020 was the first year in many, many years that I did not spend in The Bro-Thel. I had finally moved out of it in September of 2019, and had taken most if not all of Jimmy’s old belongings to a storage unit in the nearby town of Talent. 

His parents had initially wanted me to hang onto his furniture, which he had helped build and which had great sentimental value, but after moving away, they gave me their blessing to sell them if necessary. I held onto those things anyway.  

I held onto his things for as long as I could.

2021

Jimmy’s belongings and so, so many of our old memories were destroyed in the Almeda fire a few months ago, which devastated much of Southern Oregon, particularly Talent, where my storage unit had been. My unit has been reduced to a pile of rubble buried under several layers of sheet metal, which the unit owners are still in the process of getting removed. (There are a lot of insurance reasons that they can’t get the metal removed sooner, and I completely understand that it’s a complicated issue.) 

I don’t know if anything in my unit survived the fire, but I’m hopeful that I will eventually find something in there once the metal gets moved. I’m particularly hoping that something, anything of Jimmy’s, might have made it through unscathed. 

In the meantime, I have been living in Los Angeles, where I’m staying during the pandemic. My original plan was to move here in 2020 permanently, but the pandemic definitely altered those plans.

The wonderful humans at my work have very generously agreed to a temporary remote work agreement, so I’m able to live in a beautiful spacious house in LA during the pandemic and keep my job, which I love very much. 

Although I am not going out and auditioning for films or going to networking events or anything like that, I am so glad to be here. I’ve found at least one of Jimmy’s old things--an Edward Cullen lunchbox (which is currently full of old Arkham Horror cards from the board game, which sadly didn’t make it out of the fire).  

Just a few days ago, I learned that a talented young man named David, who I’d met a few times and had many mutual friends with, took his own life. I didn’t know him well, but seeing the posts on social media from others who did was heartbreaking. 

Especially now, when so many of us can’t see each other physically, it can be so incredibly difficult to know who’s fighting invisible battles and how you can be there for them. 

I still don't know what any of us could have done differently for Jimmy, or for David, or for anybody who decided it was their time to go. 

I’d like to end this with something profound, but the only thing I can think to write is to encourage us all to think of other people and to be as honest and as kind as we can. 

So if you're reading this and you know someone who wants to go early, please talk to them. Even if you can't talk them into sticking around. Just talk to them. Even if it's just about bumblebees or hippos or why salmon has an "L" in it.

Be there for your friends. Because somebody has to.

New Year’s Day, 2022

Last night, I went to a New Year’s Eve gathering and got incredibly sad. Even though time and distance have done a lot to help me forget and make it less painful, New Year’s Eve remains a terrible night for me. Memories of Jimmy, finding out about his death--they all hurt. The good ones hurt, even. 

The fake memories hurt the worst. The fake memories where I’ve imagined what was going through his head, or what transpired. I’ve conjured up all sorts of horrible things, imagining them like a movie, and I’ve played that movie in my mind so many times--at least once a year, since 2015--that they feel like real memories. I’d love to forget them.

I’d love to be able to sustain a happy note on New Year’s Eve--one that carries through into the New Year as I watch the ball drop, or hear friends and neighbors yell “Happy New Year!” to no one in particular.  

I haven’t been a particularly great friend to anyone lately, not even myself. Time and distance can do that, too.  

A lot has happened since moving to LA. I was in a few plays, and while I loved being on stage again, I felt like I was honestly just OK in them—and maybe this feeling of needing to be legendary is something that gets in the way for me—something I need to work on. I’m not sure.

I no longer have the wonderful day job, for reasons I won’t get into. It still really saddens me—it was a job I’d had for 5 years, and I’d gotten used to job security. Now, I work in an escape room, which is a lot of fun. I play a creepy maid who frightens guests, and has an Irish accent because I tried it out and the guests seem to like it. It’s rewarding to me, fulfilling even. 

Granted, I don’t make nearly as much money and I had to figure out my own insurance and everything—all sorts of really fun adulting stuff. But maybe in the long run it’s best for me. I do feel a lot happier there. And I do seem to be awfully good at scaring people. 

I was also in a few films, and keep auditioning for them. That’s one big plus to not working 32-40 hours on a computer, is getting to spend more time pursuing acting more easily. 

Most of my auditions seem to go well, though few of them so far have resulted in me getting cast. That’s okay, though. I’ve met a lot of interesting people, and sometimes they even like my crazy, long-winded stories! 

The thing that I guess has made me the absolute saddest is that I haven’t been as inspired lately, but that’s changed. Over the last couple of days, I’ve returned to a lot of my old writing projects. I’m thinking of adapting some into audio dramas. I’ve even started on a couple of scripts. 

I still need to finish The Diminished, or at least do something with it. I know I’ve been putting it off. Sometimes it’s hard to find the motivation. Sometimes a story accrues so much baggage that telling it doesn’t feel fun anymore. But it’s important to remember that telling stories isn’t always about fun--sometimes a story needs to get told. Sometimes there’s something rewarding about providing the fun for other people, and not making it all about you, the storyteller having fun. But I digress. 

On New Year’s Eve, I was glad I got to talk to my dad on the phone. I stepped outside the party and we just talked for hours, until it was almost midnight. We talked about monster movies and particularly the Wolf Man, and how the Wolf Man doesn’t always seem as scary as the others--like Dracula, Frankenstein, etc., and part of it might be because he’s just so lonely. He’s just such a bummer. And he only has powers sometimes, but his powers are a total inconvenience. We talked about some ways that we could make the Wolf Man fun. Maybe he goes on a hiking trip--sounds a lot less drab than chaining himself to a wall, right? Maybe he finally gets a bride, like Frankenstein got, or Dracula got three of. You never really hear about “Bride of the Wolf Man,” after all. 

I promised myself last year that I’d update this again on New Year’s Day, but it’s actually January 2nd. The truth is, I spent most of January 1st writing various scripts, immersing myself in creating utter fiction, with maybe a few kernels of real life thrown in there.

I think Jimmy would have preferred that. He always did like a good story. 

I haven’t had a proper New Year's resolution in a while because of how bummed out I get at this time of year, but I guess I could make one now…

It’s to write more frequently. Not to finish things, not to make things perfect, not anything like that. Just to do the writing. Maybe I’ll write a Wolf Man story. 

And maybe be a better friend when I can, too. Since, you know, somebody has to.  

(Coming soon in 2023, “Friend of the Wolf Man”? …We’ll see.)

It was a very interesting experience. And now I get to say that I’ve cut my own hair and shot a horror movie… at the same time!

Here it is:

But don’t worry, even if you’re not in Los Angeles, you can still watch the show via Livestream from the comfort of your couch, or back porch, or van, or wherever you happen to be with WiFi!

What’s It About?

The plot of “The Drunken City” concerns a bachelorette party gone horribly wrong thanks to alcohol and some questionable choices. A bit like “Bridesmaids” meets “The Hangover” if it were directed by David Lynch, the show brings some wonderfully surreal, absurd, and introspective moments to the rom-com genre.

Who Am I Playing?

My character, Melissa, is recovering from the devastation of being cheated on by her fiancé. Unlike similar characters I’ve played, Melissa decides not to become a vengeful ghost and haunt his bathtub, and instead dedicates herself to helping plan the upcoming wedding of her friends, Marnie and Gary. Despite Gary being an old flame of hers, she ships the two of them hardcore, and completely loses it when something happens that threatens their impending nuptials.

Will she attack anyone with katanas I Never Trilogy-style? You’ll have to see the show to find out!

And in case ya missed it, here’s the ticket link! Hope you can check it out!

“The Drunken City” runs June 3–6 at the Flight Theatre at the Complex in Hollywood, CA. Directed by Kyle Sanderson, it is produced by the Tower Theatre Company and presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French Inc. www.concordtheatricals.com.

This horror movie I starred in filmed 4 years ago today! Amazing! I am constantly confounded by time and the way it moves!

Anyway, this was a lot of fun to act in, especially due to all of the awesome practical makeup effects!

Synopsis: Do I Scare You? is the story of one night in the lives of a young couple in love. Secrets are revealed. Inner demons are unleashed.

I play Elise, a gal with so much emotional baggage, her inner demons are Connor Chaney in giant horns! How will her new boyfriend Darren (Kyle Sanderson) react to learning about her disturbing past? You’ll have to watch it to find out, of course!

DISY was written and directed by Dan McCloy, a master of low budget horror who is great to work with. So if you like dark movies about the horrors of physical and emotional intimacy, with a good dose of trippy flashbacks, guts, gore, and demons—well then, this is a great occasion for you to watch this film!

(Content warning—this movie contains mature content and is not recommended for young’uns or the faint of heart. It’s got sex, sexual violence, abuse, nudity, blood, guts, satanic imagery, hairpulling, foul language, and beer that does not get all the way finished. Lots of spooky stuff, so be warned!)

If this sounds like you’re cup of tea, go check it out on Vimeo on Demand! https://vimeo.com/ondemand/doiscareyou

And here are some behind the scenes photos, because why not?

Update, June 10, 2021. I wrote the article below in November of 2020. The Dateline NBC episode and accompanying podcast “Killer Role” did not air until May of 2021, so I had not seen the episode or listened to the podcast at the time of writing this. Now that “Killer Role” is out, a lot of people ask me why this blog post doesn’t address some of the elements that Dateline covered (like the police interviews).

That’s because, as someone very much on the periphery of this story, I had no idea about any of that prior to Killer Role. I’ll write a follow-up at some point now that I’ve seen/listened to it, but that said, I still stand by a lot of what I say below. It’s different when you know someone in real life versus just seeing them on a true crime show. It just is.

“From the Dark,” an independent horror movie in which I played a fun supporting role, is now available to stream on Amazon.

The film has received a fair amount of national media attention due to a manslaughter case involving the lead actress, Wyn Reed, better known as Tucker Reed. It has so far been the subject of clips and trailers for a yet-to-be-aired episode of Dateline NBC and has been written about in various magazines, blogs, and news articles.

In my opinion, most of the media coverage on this has been inaccurate, sensationalized, and unfairly biased toward painting my co-star as a villain. Headlines that refer to her as a “killer actress” who “played a killer in a horror movie” have more or less perpetuated a game of telephone. 

This is kind of ironic, given that the plot of “From the Dark” involves the power of urban legends, scary stories, rumors, and just plain suspicions—all of which directly impact one or more of the characters in some way over the course of the film. 

As far as the media coverage and even word on the street has been regarding this film, the stories point to one moment in the movie (in which her character shoots someone with a gun in self-defense) and compare it to the shooting death of her uncle, for which she eventually pled guilty to manslaughter after years of awaiting trial in jail. 

Here is what I know about Tucker Reed that I feel it is appropriate to share: 

• She and I knew each other in high school, where we acted in a handful of plays. Her mother, Kelly, would often come help with hair, makeup, and costumes. Both of them were a pleasure to be around. We had great conversations at the makeup station and we never ran out of bobby pins.

• Tucker was very talented, and I was convinced that she would make it big someday in the acting scene, and/or the writing scene, since she was also a prolific writer.

• She stood up for me when I was being bullied in high school, and I did the same for her.

• Tucker and I remained Facebook friends, but fell out of touch after high school when she went off to college in California, especially since she was not a fan of the platform and did not post frequently.

• I was happy to see that she had written a book, along with her sister and Kelly, called “Amber House,” and a sequel called “Neverwas.” If you’re a fan of paranormal thrillers and YA fiction, they are definitely worth checking out, especially the audiobook versions which Tucker narrates.

• Through posts on social media, I learned that her college campus and the police had refused to believe her when she told them that she had been raped by her then-boyfriend. Tucker recounted her story of the incident on her blog, and wrote articles about it for major publications, including Cosmopolitan. This gained her some media attention and she was able to start a group at her college advocating for victims of gendered violence.

• In 2016, she was arrested on charges of manslaughter for the shooting death of her uncle, who had a history of meth usage and violent behavior toward her and her mother.

• Two years later, an actress with a similar appearance, named Wyn Reed, started auditioning for various projects in Southern Oregon, including “From the Dark.” She did not appear to recognize me in the audition room, and out of respect for her privacy, I neither asked her about whether or not she was Tucker Reed, nor did I tell anyone anything about the story at all.

• Wyn Reed was cast as the lead (Valerie) in the movie. I was cast in the supporting role of Diane. We had a few scenes together. She was a professional and very gracious scene partner, and a good conversationalist, though we never discussed high school or the possibility that we had known each other in the past.

• A woman she introduced only as her “relative” showed up to help with costumes, hair, and makeup. Being in the same room as the pair of them made me feel like I was in high school again, and it was hard for me to not refer to them as “Tucker and Kelly.” They were, again, great to work and converse with.

• Some time after filming was complete, I learned definitively that Wyn and Tucker Reed were one and the same. I learned this when one of the producers of the film wrote to the cast and crew to let us know that Tucker had been out on bail this whole time, and that “new evidence” had been found, which had led to her being re-arrested on murder charges.

• At this point, most of the cast and crew rallied behind her to support her as she attempted to plead self-defense. It was only then that I felt comfortable talking to others about how I had recognized her during filming. I feel it’s important to note that, because some sources claim that I was the one to bring it to the producers’ attention.

• Tucker’s bail hearing did not go well. The new evidence found was a cell phone video that she herself had taken of the incident involving her uncle’s death, and the judge deemed it incriminating enough to deny her bail. (In my opinion, while very unsettling and hard to watch, the video actually seems more like proof that she was not planning to shoot him, and that she was recording with the expectation of him perpetrating violence. I am not a lawyer and have not even played one on TV, so my opinion doesn’t hold much weight, but if you want to know it, there it is.)

• Tucker spent the next two years or so behind bars, and barely saw the sky during that time. My mother and I wrote her letters, and heard back from her every once in a while. In one of my letters, I finally felt that it was the right time to thank her for standing up to me against bullies in high school, and say that I was so glad that, after all that time, we finally got to act together again.

• In May of 2020, after many postponements of her trial, a possession of heroin charge (which I personally find suspicious given similar stories I’ve heard of people being set up for such things), and various bad circumstances, Tucker agreed to a plea deal. She pled guilty to 2nd degree manslaughter and had the other more serious charges dropped. She is currently serving a 6-year prison sentence.

• I feel bad for not writing to her since learning of that. It’s always hard to know what to say. I hope she is doing okay in there, that she is being treated a little better, and that she at least gets to see the sky.

• Her character in the movie, Valerie, at one point shoots another character in self-defense. Based solely on that, her character has been referred to as the movie’s “killer.”

• Tucker shot someone who had attacked her in the past, in what was arguably self-defense. Based solely on that, she herself has been referred to as a “killer.” 

When you hear “killer” and “horror movie” close together, it conjures up images of a slasher going around on a killing spree, like Freddy, or Jason, or Ghostface. 

Instead, I’d argue that her character is a lot more like the “Final Girl” in a horror film—a woman we’re rooting for to survive the night, to escape the attacker, and not to kill unless she is truly in fear for her life and the lives of others. 

Articles pushing the “killer actress” narrative were already being published long before she accepted her plea deal. There were already people out there viewing her as a “killer” and even using her acting skills to paint her in a sinister light. 

I am biased, and I recognize that I am biased, so I’m not demanding you to accept my opinion at face value either. But at the end of the day, I do encourage you to take the information you receive with a grain of salt.

I should point out that I am happy for the filmmakers and that they were able to finish and distribute the film. That’s huge for an indie movie, let alone a small budget one. I do wish that it was receiving attention for different reasons, obviously. 

And as for claims about how “the whole “killer actress” thing is the only reason anybody would have ever heard of this movie,” sure, I get why that probably seems like the case. But on the other hand, how do you know that? How do you know that this wouldn’t have been that rare, lucky indie film that gets seen by the right person at the right time? 

Even if I hadn’t been cast in the movie, I still would be rooting for it. I would be rooting for its excellent script, its hard-working production team, its cast of dedicated local actors, and the fact that hey, this is an indie horror film that was made entirely in my region of Southern Oregon. What’s more, it happens to be a movie that reunited me with an old friend. 

In closing, I just want to add that as a longtime fan of the horror genre, I understand the appeal of finding out that something happened “in real life.” But as I usually do when I’m calming my friends down while they’re covering their eyes during a horror flick, I’m here to tell you one thing: 

And that’s that it’s okay. You can open your eyes. The “monster” on the screen that you’re afraid of? That’s a person. 

It was a chilly winter day in Ashland when Rory Owens and I met up at the downtown Starbucks to talk about making a film. I had spent the day before writing the script in that same Starbucks, at the next table over.

The script was an 8-page horror film called "I Never Can." The plot concerned a man who keeps cheating on his girlfriend and the horrifying consequences that result. I took inspiration from an old folktale from Japan called “The Reconciliation” by Lafcadio Hearn. (This story is perhaps best known as the source material for “The Black Hair,” part 1 of Masaki Kobayashi’s 1964 film “Kwaidan.”)

Hearn was a European writer from the 19th century best known for his writing collections of Japanese legends and ghost stories. I had been a fan of these stories for quite some time. For years, I had wanted to write a script inspired by this story, taking the key elements that resonated with me, updating the action to the modern-day, and updating the setting to the Pacific Northwest.

And the day had come.

Rory Owens was and is a good friend of mine. His girlfriend at the time, Angelica, is one of my best friends. The three of us had met at in community college in Weed, California, where we worked together on various projects. At the end of that year, I moved back to my hometown of Ashland, Oregon, to attend college at Southern Oregon University. Rory and Angelica followed the year after to study film and business, respectively. They moved into a cozy apartment in Talent, Oregon, which Angelica decorated stylishly with lots of Japanese artwork. I went over there all the time—often to act in Rory’s student films.

Since then, we made friends with our fourth musketeer, Daniel Rester, and formed the production company ROW 211 FILMS. Just last year, ROW 211 made and produced our first feature-length movie, “Emma Was Here.” Also, somewhere in there, Rory and Angelica got married and I was a bridesmaid at their wedding and made a toast about toast. They had two adorable kids, and Angelica became one of the best portrait photographers in Oregon, if not the world.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. On that day, in Starbucks, ROW 211 was not yet a thing. We were just a couple of college students looking for a fun project to do over winter break.

Little did I know that this conversation was leading to something much bigger... a series of short horror films called the “I Never” trilogy. It remains one of my most ambitious projects to date.

Here’s how it all happened:

I Never Can

One of the major reasons why we made “I Never Can” was because the stars just kind of aligned that way.

I had recently accepted the lead role in another short student film, which was scheduled to shoot during winter break. It still blows my mind to think that if this other film had ended up happening, the “I Never” trilogy might not have.

My co-star in that other film was Jon Cates, who had recently starred in a play I’d written at the University. In the play, he had delighted audiences with his portrayal of a cool, detached, sarcastic vampire. Many people (especially moms in the ladies’ room at intermission) told me he was their favorite part of the show. I had recommended him to the director of the other film, who ended up agreeing with me and casting him almost on the spot. Eager to act, Jon stayed in Ashland over the first part of winter break, rather than heading back to his hometown.

And then (for totally understandable and sad reasons) the other film got canceled. Jon and I ended up with big film-shaped holes in our schedules.

…And that was when I remembered that Rory had mentioned not long before that he’d like to film one of them sometime. (Luckily for me, Rory had some free time as well.)

… … And THAT was when I remembered how I had wanted to adapt that old ghost story, and how I could see Jon in the lead role of Matt.

Hence my writing the script, us meeting up about it, and the shoot.

“I Never Can” was one of the most fun and easy shoots I’ve ever done. It was also a great lesson in the limitations of no-budget filmmaking. At the time, we didn't have much in the way of sound equipment, so we had to make do with having the actors share a LAV mic.

Pro-tip: When all you have is a LAV mic, you’re probably going to have to do ADR on any scenes that involve hugging.

Here are some of my favorite happy accidents that happened while filming:

the red light

We were filming a car scene where Jon drives at night, and happened to pass by a car with particularly bright red taillights at just the right time. A flash of red goes across Jon’s face that timed nicely with the narration.

opposite day

The talented Kalindi Garcia was cast as the named-but-never-referred-to-as character of “Susie.” She had been in talks to be in that student film only to have it canceled and wound up with a bit of free time as well. We shot her scenes at her house, which was perfect for our purposes. Not only did this shoot go off without a hitch, but it just so happened that Kalindi had a piece of artwork on her wall that said "I Can," which you can see at the end of their scene when Matt is leaving.

finding connor

I had initially written the role of Sean, Matt’s friend, with an actor in mind who ended up not being available. Jon recommended we cast another actor from the school: Connor Chaney.

Now, I knew Connor at the time—we had been in a play together the previous year called “Cody Stanfield: I Know You Stole My Gameboy Color in the Third Grade and Now the World Does Too.” I’d also once seen him bring in a speech from “Hamlet” to class and perform it off-book and it was some of the best acting I’d ever seen, so I was kind of intimidated. Jon assured me, though, that Connor was actually very approachable, so we went for it.

If memory serves me right, we didn’t have his number and couldn’t get a hold of him through Facebook messenger, so Jon and I ended up driving up to Connor’s apartment during our lunch break. We ate fast food in Jon’s car and waited for Connor to come out of there like we were on a stakeout or something. Connor eventually walked up and we rolled down the windows and Jon said:

“Hey! Wanna be in a movie today?”

And Connor was like: “Sure!”

Turns out he was very approachable after all!

Pro tip: This method of finding actors is not recommended in most situations.

Connor showed up and learned his lines with lightning speed. We threw Jon’s green hoodie on him that happened to go with his beanie for a costume. This ended up becoming Sean’s “look” for all 3 films, and actually became a plot point in the 3rd.

(Fun fact, if you watch a lot of movies filmed in Southern Oregon, that green hoodie is all over the place in them. It’s like the costume piece that never dies.)

That scene also heavily inspired me to write the sequels. Towards the end of the scene, I added this shot of Connor/Sean staring as Jon/Matt closes the door in his face. It was this really intense stare that gave me and Rory chills watching it back. It made me think more about the character. I thought, “maybe there’s something else going on here. Maybe Sean isn’t just a guy who comes to the door with some flowers and exposition. Maybe he knows something.”

the release

Rory completed editing in a couple of months’ time (though we did have to go in and do some ADR for a bit of dialogue, which was to be expected). He added a score stitched together with sound effects from “freesound.org,” which later received praise from The Hollywood Investigator when “I Never Can” received an honorable mention from the Tabloid Witch Awards.

Locally, “I Never Can” screened at the SOU student film festival, the Klamath Film Festival, and the Killer Valley Film Festival. Elsewhere, it was accepted into the Silver Dollar Film Festival and the AxWound Film Festival—a festival that focuses on horror films by female directors.

It also got great reactions online and when aired on RVTV. People would come up to me in the 7-11 and Safeway to tell me they’d seen my movie, wanting to know whether it was all in Matt’s head, what was the ending supposed to mean, would there be any sequels?”

Well, as it turns out…

I Never Will

People asked me if I would make a sequel to “I Never Can,” and I had jokingly responded “I never will.” Well, that wasn’t entirely wrong. Because I did end up making a sequel and I called it “I Never Will.”

The inspiration for “I Never Will” was another Lafcadio Hearn story called “Of a Promise Broken.” I had encountered it in another book of Hearn’s short stories that a friend had gifted me after viewing “I Never Can.” It’s a terrifying story that has not been adapted to film very often. The best version I’ve ever seen of “Of a Promise Broken” is an indie film from New Orleans directed by Christian Walker.

The story of “Promise” concerns the new bride of a widower who keeps encountering the dead wife of her new husband when left alone in the house. Immediately upon reading it, I realized that there was a way to combine some of the characters from the first film and still effectively tell the major beats of the story I wanted to communicate.

Although Matt, Sean, and Jenny (who was played by me in the first film) are returning characters, the primary focus is on a new character named Kim.

I cast Aleah Zimmer as Kim. Another brilliant acting student from SOU, I had seen her in plays for quite some time and had always wanted to work with her. She was also close with the other actors in the film, so they all had great chemistry. (I’ve since learned that this is an awesome thing when you have a small cast, but can be problematic if your cast is very large and difficult to coordinate.)

A major learning from “I Never Can” had been the necessity to block out windows to avoid daylight creeping in and ruining a scene that’s supposed to take place at night. I remember Rory going out and hanging blankets on the outsides of all of his windows prior to us shooting, and it definitely helped.

Since we had more time to plan this one, we were able to get together better lights and sound gear and spend more time on logistics and planning. We planned for a 3-day shoot for the main plot of the movie, with other shoots scheduled for later on when actors and crew had time.

I’ll admit that I pretty much straight up STOLE the opening sequence of “I Never Will” from another project that Rory and I had made years previously—a music video called “The Color of Blue.” (Rory was completely on board though. Fun fact, Martin Bianchini’s score at the opening of “I Never Will,” is actually a slowed-down version of the opening notes from the song “The Color of Blue,” per Rory’s request.)

I do kind of regret not filming a version of the “distracted boyfriend” meme with me, Jon, and Jay Zheng, who plays the jogger in that scene and was also a PA on this film and its sequel. (I didn't intend it this way, but I now think of that scene as basically just the “distracted boyfriend” meme with a really fancy set-up.)

More cool things about this shoot:

The ghostly flicker

During a climactic scene where a ghost appears and frightens Kim, I was facing a conundrum. I couldn’t decide if I wanted the main lights in the bedroom on or off. Connor, who was roped into the task of “light-switch guy” simply by virtue of where he was standing at the time, kept flipping them on and off for me. Then, Rory said “actually having the lights flicker might look kind of cool,” so that’s exactly what we did, and I love it.

saving scenes with reshoots

Because I realized that adding shoot dates was a thing, I added some scenes that take place at different locations outside of the main shoot. However, because there was hardly any budget on this, adding shoot dates was tough, and sometimes entire months would pass between scenes. But sometimes, reshooting scenes was totally, 100% necessary.

Pro-tip: Be very careful when recording an important dialogue scene during which two characters take apart a shrine of dead flowers and throw them into noisy garbage bags.

THE “BAR” SCENE

Another example: There’s a scene in the movie that’s supposed to take place at a bar. Finding a bar to shoot in was proving challenging, and we actually ended up shooting this scene at a friend’s house in Ashland. This scene shot months after the rest of the shoot, but I’d gone to a party there that had a bar-like area and got inspired. The friend, Corvus Woolf, makes a brief appearance as one of the guys “acting” in the corner. His many fascinating decorations got a ton of close-ups because they were all so cool-looking and kind of creepy. They were exactly what we were going for.

Cameron Gray was cast in the role of Bartender and showed up (to his credit) looking like a normal bartender. “Oh no,” I remember saying to him. “You look way too normal to work in this place now that we’ve set it up.” A friend of Corvus’ who also ended up being featured in that scene, William Hallows, had some extra clothing items with him that completed the look. When Cameron came back, one of the people present (I can’t remember who) said “Whoa dude, that bartender looks like he’s about to knife somebody.”

Perfect.

The other big character for this scene was Hannah, a casting director who makes a pass at Matt. I had put out a casting notice for this role and had a lot of actresses in their 20s apply, but I ended up going with somebody totally different than I had envisioned…

the amazing robyn fichter

Robyn Fichter was a non-traditional actress who was working towards getting a degree in theatre at the college despite being much older than most of the other students, which I deeply respected. She did such an awesome job with this character, and the fact that she’s so much older than Matt actually adds a ton of interesting subtext to the scene. I remember her showing up with image options, asking all of these great characters about her character… She was a pleasure to work with and it was great.

Afterwards, she ended up being a huge help to me just in general, and a great friend. She would always share and like posts on social about the movies, offer to help with things like scheduling and giving people rides. She was a really awesome and supportive person. I recommended her for absolutely everything whenever anybody I knew was looking for an actress in her age range. She even ended up playing my mom in the film “The Truth About Daisies.”

Tragically, Robyn passed away in 2018 from health issues. She makes a brief appearance in the third film of the “I Never” trilogy, which is dedicated to her. We all miss her terribly.

the release of “I Never Will”

Because we’d gotten busy with other projects, “I Never Will” did not release till 2017, about two years after we had filmed it. It screened to favorable reactions at the Killer Valley Horror Film Festival, but its longer length (17 minutes) led to lots of festivals turning it down.

Online, though, it has done quite well, with people discovering it and saying favorable things to this day. A lot of the praise is thanks to Martin Bianchini’s amazing original score, the great performances, and, of course, Rory’s awesome editing.

I Never Did

Part 3, to quote Jon, was “just insane.”

Instead of basing it on one story, I actually took bits and pieces from a bunch of different Hearn stories and wrote a finale to Matt’s tale of hauntings.

“I Never Did,” was very ambitious. It had tons more characters, locations, and events—including a katana-fight that we shot partly from a drone thanks to my friend Ryan Niemi, a Klamath Falls-based filmmaker who shoots some pretty awesome stuff with his drone.

We started filming not long after filming wrapped for “I Never Will.” Since it was almost impossible to shoot all of the film in one block of time considering everybody’s busy schedules, we shot it over a series of evenings and weekends over the course of summer break.

At the time, I had taken a second job as a housekeeper, (a job I had only started in order to raise more funds for the film). I actually ended up quitting that job when they refused my request to take a day off work for filming.

Hilariously, Jon, Connor, and two of the other actors for this film, Taylor and Galen, all worked at the same summer job. One good thing about this was that I always knew when they would be available and when they wouldn’t, since they all had the same schedule.

The job they worked at was for the college and involved moving things out of the old theatre building so that they could start construction. The hilarious part (to me, anyway) is that it took just about as long for construction to be finished on the theatre building as it did for us to finish a rough cut of “I Never Did.” (Both things didn’t end up happening until 2018.)

Still, for as crazy and wild of a ride as it was (especially with scheduling), I’m really glad we got to shoot “I Never Did.” I learned a ton and was super happy that so many people helped us out with our fundraising campaign. Fundraising helped us buy some important props and equipment that would have made shooting impossible otherwise.

Since the movie isn’t out yet, I don’t want to say too much about specific scenes. What I will say is that I am so proud of everybody involved for being so dedicated to the process. Rory, in particular, has put in a lot of hours on this one over the years.

And yes, ROW 211 also made "Emma Was Here," an entire feature film, in the time that it took to edit “I Never Did.” That just goes to show you two things.

1. “I Never Did” was just that intricate and epic that it needed such a long post.

2. “Emma Was Here” was so good and so relevant that people were jumping to make it happen. That movie shot in the summer of 2018 and is still in post-production. Since it doesn’t have any snake demons or drone sword fights, its editing process won’t take as long as “I Never Did’s.”

What’s next for “I Never Did”

“I Never Did” has had one screening so far and is about to have a second. The first was a screening with our friends at the Killer Valley Horror Film Festival, which we treated as a test screening.

We made some adjustments to the cut based on the audience reactions from that event, as well as from a few friends who watched an early screener and responded to questionnaires. Now, we’re getting ready for its second-ever-showing! The new cut features a brand new original score by the incredible Bret Levick.

The ENTIRE “I Never” trilogy will screen at the Portland Art Museum on October 24th as part of the Northwest Film Center’s Northwest Tracking program. (Tickets can be found HERE unless you’re reading this after-the-fact.) This is the first time ever that all three films will be screening at once, and I couldn’t be more excited. I am grateful for my film family, for the Northwest Film Center, for all the people who have supported me on the way, and for happy accidents that sometimes turn out to add production value where you least expect it.

In 2015 producer Chance McLurkenclurk set out to make a dating reality show unlike any seen before. Setting up fame seeking schmucks to be married to a real life vampire. After three months of shooting, none of the cast or crew were ever seen again. These tapes were all that was left behind.

They have been lovingly edited together in a spirit that we believe McLurkenclurk would appreciate.

This is the title screen that appears before almost every episode of How To Marry A Vampire. In the canon of the show, the cast and crew all went missing due to dangerous, unexplained circumstances. Eventually, as more tapes “resurfaced,” more episodes could be uploaded to YouTube.

It was a brilliant idea, and all credit for it goes to Ross Williams of XRATS Productions, who edited the first 5 episodes and the opening credits sequence. (And I am so happy to say that, at the time of this writing, he has not gone missing and is quite happily working as one of the most skilled and busy freelancers in Southern Oregon.)

The truth is that How To Marry A Vampire was a big pipe dream of mine that proved to be much more difficult to pull off than I had originally anticipated. My initial plan for the show was to shoot a “pilot” episode and a “next week on” teaser, to promote it at that year’s Oregon Fringe Festival, and then to continue shooting over the course of several weekends over the next few months.

Origins

You might be wondering why I wanted to make a show like this in the first place. It’s so massively silly.

To understand why, I’m going to take you on a little field trip back to 2015. I was in my senior year at Southern Oregon University, and I had just written and staged a production of my one-act play, Energy Costs, which features vampires as roommates (and yes, I HAVE seen the excellent film/series What We Do in the Shadows, though regrettably not until after I had written a play with such a similar premise that I now feel like I can’t market without people making parallels—thank you so much for asking!) Regardless, I was on a big vampire kick. I had been invited to come play a vampire character on a talk show for my friend, Ian Fyfield (who is a real person and should absolutely host a show on TV). I prepared a character but ended up getting cut for time.

I am actually so glad my character didn’t make it onto the show, because that was one of my biggest motivators to make a web series, and had I made it onto the show, I probably would have just left the entire concept of what would eventually be How To Marry A Vampire as a simple sketch.

The Real Production Story

So, I set out to make the show, and everything came together really beautifully. Yes, we ended up having to shoot a show about vampires during the day. (Vampires can go in the sun in this universe, okay?)

If you’ve been following the show, you might notice that the cast is rather huge. Coordinating that many people proved to be very challenging, especially for a show with such a low budget. The location that served as Millarca’s castle proved difficult to swing for multiple shoots, and finding anything that compared to it was tricky, to say the least.

That being said, our How To Marry A Vampire shoot was one of the most fun experiences I’ve had on set, and perhaps ever in my life. Starring a cast of talented local actors from the University as well as from the local film community, and with a chill, super fun crew, the whole day was an absolute blast. Although there was a script, most of the shoot was improvised, and there were full scenes and sequences we had never planned on shooting that proved to be some of the most enjoyable parts of the whole thing.

Ross’ brilliant idea to break the content we had shot for the pilot episode into “bite-sized” chunks proved to be the best possible way to move forward. Combined with the “device” of the missing cast/crew, this allowed us to not only use extra content that had not been scripted, but also to cover up for any missing clips, patching the narrative together as best we could.

Returning from Resting in Peace

Life happened, as it often does, but fortunately, some of us got together to shoot a finale episode to wrap up the plot the following year. Not everyone could make it back, so there are some off-screen deaths and disappearances that will remain a mystery, but I am still so thrilled that there is a conclusion to the series and that it doesn’t just end in the middle of nowhere. You’ll get to know who Millarca chooses, and that’s pretty incredible.

Of course, life was still happening and distracting me from getting more episodes uploaded. I took over editing for Ross once he got too busy with other projects, and I myself ended up getting too busy—producing and acting in the feature film Emma Was Here and making the massive undertaking that is The Diminished were definitely big distractions!

I am somewhat ashamed that it took me over a year to upload Episode 8 to YouTube, but once I saw how many subscribers the forgotten channel had, and how many people had e-mailed and messaged asking about it, I realized that I needed to pick it back up again and give people the ending they wanted. I’m sure a lot of people thought the show ended at the end of 7, with Vladislava and Sketch plotting to murder the other contestants. Perhaps that could have been a good stopping point, but it wasn’t what I had originally envisioned by any means. Like I said before, it’s all about seeing who Millarca chooses in the end.

Episodes 8 and 9 are now up on YouTube, after a long, long wait, and the finale will soon be joining them. Due to massive neglect on my part, the original website has been taken down, along with all of the hilarious content that was on it. I am working to get a new website set up as soon as possible, but in the meantime, you can visit my site migwindows.com and the YouTube channel to watch. Be sure to subscribe!

Season 2?

Some people have asked about a possible follow-up season, and it’s definitely a possibility I’m open to—perhaps even excited about. Would it be about another ex-bride of Dracula? Dracula himself? A different vampire entirely? Maybe Season 2 is about a different CREATURE entirely, like a Werewolf or a Goblin King. You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out!

In the meantime, happy watching. And a huge thanks to all of you who encouraged me to free this project from the crypt. I’ve been having a blast just watching the funny shit we came up with all those years ago, and I hope you have as well.

For those of you who have yet to see it, why not start from the beginning?

Full series playlist on YouTube!

Keep up to date:

Subscribe on YouTube
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And what the hell, check it out on Twitter too!

To watch the movie, scroll down to the very bottom. If you’d like to read about my journey and learnings, keep reading.

My Film Festival Journey

I’ll never forget the rush of excitement I felt when my first short film, NOT A BENCH, made it into the Klamath Independent Film Festival in 2015. Not only was it accepted, but it won the Grand Jury Prize, which I still have hanging on my bedroom wall to this day.

That was a very special and formative film experience for me, not only because the film’s lead actor, my co-star & close friend, Jimmy Dix, had passed away earlier that year, but also because it gave me hope that even though the movie was technically flawed and full of continuity errors that I had been able to create something that resonated with people so strongly. The film later won the audience choice award at the SOU Student Film Festival (which now has an award named after Jimmy) and it still plays regularly on Rogue Valley Community Television.

NOT A BENCH’s success remains in Ashland. Although I did submit it to a few different film festivals, it was never accepted anywhere else. I am okay with that. To me, although it was such a personal project and I love that people still get to see Jimmy’s face and acting talent from time to time, it was not my strongest film. I believe that I have grown much more as an artist and as a filmmaker. I have directed dozens of projects since then, including short horror films, a disturbing short thriller about a predatory photographer, a comedic web series about vampires, and a music video for a critically-acclaimed folk singer.

And yet, people still often tell me that NOT A BENCH was their favorite of my films, which leaves me with a sinking sort of feeling. While I’m grateful to have made such a lasting impact on people, I can’t help but feel like a “one hit wonder” on a very local level. It makes me think that the success of the movie had everything to do with the humorous script that Jimmy and I wrote and with me being a “quirky cute girl with purple hair,” and perhaps our chemistry. It leaves me with the feeling that the only people who care about me and what I have to say are locals in the Southern Oregon area, and only on the condition that I give them what they want to see — me being “cute and quirky,” rather than having anything to say.

That brings me to the topic of today’s post, BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS, which I am releasing for the very first time in this blog post that you are currently reading.

A Movie that Shouldn’t Exist, But Hey, Here It Is Anyway

Now, BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS is the very opposite of “deep.” I didn’t make this project on anybody’s behalf or because I had some grand statement to make. In fact, I didn’t even make this film with the intention of it being a film at all.

Originally, this 3:30 video that is now BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS was supposed to be what was playing on the TV screen in my horror film, THE DIMINISHED (now in post-production). One of the lead characters, Tucker, was going to watch it on his TV screen at the very start of his drug-induced descent into madness. This video, which was meant to be an absurdist parody of TWIN PEAKS, was to launch what was going to be a 20-minute “TV sequence” akin to RICK & MORTY’s inter-dimensional cable. Dozens of actors were cast in this “TV sequence,” which was going to feature a disturbing Billy Mays parody, an unnerving sitcom, and two other follow-ups to the BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS show.

However, due to various nightmarish circumstances that were mostly my fault and that I won’t go into here, THE DIMINISHED went through a huge overhaul. I had to cut 30+ pages of material in order to complete it as a short, rather than as a feature. I cannot even begin to tell you how painful that was for me. That “TV sequence” was pretty much entirely thrown out the window, and lots of actors who had been preparing to shoot their scenes were no longer in the movie.

BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS was one of the only things I had gotten around to shooting, and is the only thing I shot that works as its own short film. When I discovered that I could edit it together in a way that made the movie it’s “own thing,” I was very excited.

Not only that, but after all of the stress of THE DIMINISHED, it was really freeing for me to be able to edit something that didn’t have so much weight on it. I got to play around with some new editing techniques, learn about 1980s color grading, and just… have fun.

But above all else, I thought this:

HOLY SMOKES, THIS IS A COMEDY? AND IT’S THREE AND A HALF MINUTES? THIS IS SOOOOOO GETTING INTO FILM FESTIVALS!

Because here’s the thing:

Film Festivals, when accepting short films, generally like them to be on the shorter side of short. For a long time, I would act in and even make my own short films that were longer than 15 minutes, only to hear of or experience film festivals turning them down. In almost every occurrence, some kind soul volunteering for the festival (usually someone I knew) would reach out to let me know that “you were so good in the movie / I really liked your movie but it was over 15 minutes long and we only have so much time in our shorts program. Next time, tell your friend who made it / remember to make a shorter film if you want it to make it into the program!”

So, with BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS, I had a rare opportunity to not only go under the 15 minute mark, but go under it by a significant amount. I thought that it was a shoe-in for festivals everywhere. That it would get in just by being short enough to not be a hindrance to the film programming.

I was so confident about BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS that I submitted it to dozens of film festivals.

So far, I have heard back from 4. With the exception of one film festival that upon closer review seems a bit sketchy, they all said “No thanks.”

Including, as of last night, the Klamath Film Festival. Where I won my first award for my first film all those years ago.

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HOWEVER, I’m not upset with Klamath or anybody on the board for not accepting BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS. I know that most festivals have hundreds of films to get through, and that there are many factors that go into whether or not a film gets picked, especially for a shorts program. These things include whether or not a piece has the right “tone” or “theme” for their program, how it will play in combination with the other films they select, and personal preference.

BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS is a wacky 1980s journey through three and a half minutes of trippy wildness. After all, it was literally created to kick off a bad trip! When I think about the nice folks over in Klamath, many of whom are probably older, have families, and weren’t prepared for the themes, I can certainly see why my weird little short didn’t fit in with what they were going for.

Which is one of the reasons I’m deciding not to make a big deal about entering this film into more festivals, and why I’m deciding to release it online.

Because, at the end of the day, I have to remind myself that I didn’t make this movie to be a film festival show pony. I didn’t make it to enter it into competitions. I made it because I could. And the fact that I have even three-minutes worth of material that survived from what was going to be one of my favorite parts of THE DIMINISHED is a miracle to me.

Plus, STRANGER THINGS just came out, and I’m sure some of you are suffering from withdrawals and need your 1980s-fix.

:)

One last thing though: I have some advice about entering into film festivals for those of you who are interested in doing that and don’t know where to start.

Film Festival Advice

1. Do your research! There are plenty of film festivals out there that are legit, but plenty more are just “entry fee collection services,” to quote my friend Ryan Niemi (whose drone shots you’re about to see in BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS).

2. Just because you didn’t get accepted doesn’t mean your film is garbage. It truly doesn’t. There are so many wonderful films out there that film festivals have turned down. Again, it can be because of length, content, personal preference—it can even be because most filmmakers happened to submit comedies that year, but you submitted the one super-depressing drama. Your may have moved one of the volunteers watching it to tears—but because it wasn’t funny and they wanted to keep it light, they passed you up. It happens.

3. Just because you DID get accepted doesn’t mean your film is better than anyone else’s. Most “entry-fee collection service” festivals will accept anything and reward you with a vanity laurel. I have enough of those that I bet if I printed them all out, they’d cover an entire wall of my house. I’m sure there are people who do that, too. And even if the festival your film got into was legit, had a screening, and wasn’t just interested in your money, that doesn’t mean that “congratulations, your goose documentary made it in! You are hereby acknowledged as a better filmmaker than your friend Bob whose duck documentary didn’t make it in. You are hereby certified to be a jackass to him forever because you are a certified™ better filmmaker!) Maybe they just literally wanted to feature geese and not ducks for whatever reason. Enjoy your success, but don’t let it go to your head. (I would know. Bob still isn’t talking to me.)

4. Submitting at all is a gamble and it’s only worth what you make of it. I use FilmFreeway for most of my festival submissions. Almost every film festival charges money to submit, and the ones that don’t are going to have lower odds of accepting your film just because of the sheer amount of people out there who want to submit something without paying. If you feel strongly about your film, go for it. If the festival offers feedback, ask for it. At the very least, make your submissions something you can learn from, and not a bad gambling habit. (She said, with $34 in her bank account, eating her third bowl of top ramen that day).

5. Sometimes it’s okay to just post something online. Which is why I’m doing this now. I don’t plan on raking in the dough on this one, getting more fancy laurels, or seeing it on any big screens. Knowing that it’ll make a few people chuckle as they watch it on their phones is enough for me.

6. Klamath is still a solid film festival that Oregonians should consider submitting to anyway especially if you’re a local in the Southern Oregon Area. It’s one of the only Oregon-centered film fests out there, won’t break your bank, and if it does make it in, the festival itself is pretty fun.

Some other cool festivals around the Southern Oregon area are the Ashland Independent Film Festival’s locals only program (which is very competitive but free for locals and worth the effort), the SOU Student Film Festival (if you’re a student), the Killer Valley Horror and Comedy Film Festivals (which I might submit this weird little thing to after all—we’ll see), the Jefferson State Flixx Festival, and the Bend Film Festival, which I’ve never gotten into, but they’re cool, have a rockin’ social media presence, and they at least write very kind rejection letters!

The Actual Movie, Between the Mountains

So, without any further ado, here is BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS!

Huge thanks to my cast, Galen James-Heskett, Lauren Davis, and Nolan Sanchez, to my DP, Gaffer, and miscellaneous manager Erik Brendeland, Dan McCloy, and Jaime Danielle, and to everyone who supported me along the way. Especially my boyfriend, Kyle Sanderson, the movie’s biggest fan, who encouraged me to post this today.

Thanks for reading and watching.

—Mig

PS - I don’t mean to sound ungrateful to the NOT A BENCH fans. Thank you to everybody who continues to like that film and keep Jimmy’s memory alive. It means a lot to me and to his family & friends that he continues to live on and make people laugh when they stumble across it. (For those of you who haven’t seen NOT A BENCH, you can view that here, and while you’re at it, check out some of XRATS Productions’ stuff on that channel. That’s Ross Williams, a very talented filmmaker and the chillest guy in Southern Oregon showbiz.)

Once upon a time, I wrote a play.

It’s not the first play I’ve ever written, and it probably won’t be the last, but it is one of the most personal scripts I’ve ever attempted to put to paper—that’s for sure.

The play was called Within 10 Feet. At the time, it told the story of a mysterious masked lady named Mrs. Stevens, who goes to an old, burned down dormitory where she used to go to college. She’s gone to pay a visit to Mr. Warrick, a current instructor there who was an old flame of hers back in her college days. In between dozens of cigarettes, the pair reminisce, argue, and theorize about how the dorm building burned down—but since Mr. Warrick was such a notorious liar in the days of yesteryear, can she really trust his account of events? Or his declaration that she did, in fact, mean something to him after all?

Neither of those characters are in the play any more.

Well, that’s not true. They are, but their names have been changed, they’ve evolved quite a bit, and they are no longer burdened with a framing device that naggingly reminded me of a clip show on a sitcom.

The fact that the framing device was not working was just one of the things I learned by having a play-reading in 2017, almost exactly two years ago.

Background

The reading was part of a local writer’s group called the Ashland Atelier. It had been around for about 10 years at that point, and I had both acted in readings there and had the privilege of having my own scripts read there, as well.

I was in New York City, on vacation, when I submitted the script. I felt good about it. In the months leading up to the reading, I even had a read-through at a small writers group I was involved with at the time. That went over very well and I got very useful feedback, (including a few warnings that the script seemed a tad too long, which perhaps I should have taken more seriously, as you’ll see.)

Still, I remember saying something like “This is dark! This is edgy! But it’s also funny! People will eat it up! Someone will see it and want to stage it somewhere, or make a film of it, or something. This script is really going places!”

Where it ended up going was back on the shelf for a couple of years, and that was probably for the best.

Now, I will say that I know I did a few things right. I had these things going for me, in particular:

• A fantastic cast of actors

• People actively helping me promote the show, print scripts, etc.

• A good story. I knew the story was good.

But there were a few things I was forgetting. And now I know them.

And now that I’m planning another reading for April 5th, just around the corner at Theatre Convivio, I’ve done what was hard to do. I’ve made cuts to the script. I’ve changed things around. I’ve made it better.

What did I learn?

1. Know Your Audience and Don’t Lose Track of Time

After the reading, an elderly man from the audience took the time to reach out to me via email and let me know that “the play is too long for seniors with shortened bladders.” It was funny, and it was probably very true. The play was too long by a mile. (And as a side note, another senior reached out to me later to let me know that his bladder is weak too but that he didn’t mind it at all because the play was so engaging. That was sweet of him to say.)

Bathroom complications of the elderly aside, there is definitely a lesson to be learned there. You need to remember your audience. It’s something I’ve struggled with sometimes as an eccentric weirdo with a tendency to speak in long anecdotal diatribes. When my characters do the same thing, one’s ability to stay attentive can become a problem.

I remember the evening of that reading in 2017 very clearly. Things got started around 6:30. The cast was doing a great job, and the audience was loving it… at first. For the first hour and a half, every line was greeted by a chorus of raucous laughter. During intermission, quite a few people congratulated me on my witty comedy.

The second act was much less of a hit. Five or so people left during it, and two ladies behind me kept saying things like "they just keep talking in circles; it's so annoying" during a big climactic scene. When a major plot twist happened, one of them said, "well we already knew that." At the end of the play, one of them said "Finally! Good lord!"

During the very brief and uncomfortable Q&A, all I could see when I looked out at the audience was the faces of those two ladies, bored and agitated. I was very eager to go be anywhere but there. It was 9:30, I had a headache, and needed to escape.

So, how did I let this happen? How did I let my memory play about emotionally challenged chain-smokers turn into the “The Iceman Cometh” of Ashland play-readings?

2. Not Every Great Moment From Your Life Belongs In a Play

Well, I’ll tell you. It was a self-indulgent mess. It was sloppy. It meandered. Many, many pages of it simply had the subtext of “Isn’t Mig clever for writing this joke?”

It’s hard to rewrite things like this. Things that are so personal. Because even though this is a fantastical story that spans decades and never happened, there is a lot of truth in it. There are passages of dialogue ripped directly from my real memories. There are characters who share traits with people I’ve known. While the play isn’t based on real events, a few fragments of reality made it in there. More than usually make it in there when I set out to write a thing.

(Note: Stephen King was quoting somebody else. A lot of people argue about who actually first said “Kill Your Darlings,” but I like the way Stephen King said it so I quoted him.)

If you know me, you probably know that I get inspired easily. What inspires me? Plenty of things. The way a girl talks excitedly at a party. The way a grizzled old man holds his cigarette while cussing out a bird. The way a group of friends laugh with each other in the street except for that one friend who just isn’t getting it. The way two people having a hostile public disagreement will drop it the second they see a cat wandering their way.

Sometimes the things that inspire me are more personal. A nasty emotional scar that formed in my heart, caused by someone’s callousness and deepened by my own emotional sensitivity.

Sometimes, it’s circumstances, which can be the biggest scar-makers of all. You can make peace with a callous person someday, maybe. A callous circumstance, though, is faceless, and can’t be swayed by words.

Sometimes, it’s me. Sometimes I’m the person who didn’t realize my actions left another person feeling those sad, horrible feelings, and I have to sit there living with the knowledge that I know how they feel, but my words won’t do anything to make things better.

But maybe, just maybe, my words can have an impact on somebody else. That sense of “Hey, this story gets you. You’re not alone” might come across, and it just might help some stranger in a chair in an audience feel a little better about what they’ve gone through, and maybe also a little better about sitting in a chair for so long.

And that’s when I head back up to the data center of my memory, which is great at remembering moments and feelings and ideas but terrible at remembering math equations, and I start shaping together a story.

But what’s important is that I remember later to tighten the script, trim the unnecessary bits, and keep in mind that, if the audience is getting their ass flattened, if their bladders are bursting, and if their attention spans are limited, then the words won’t land.

If you know me, you might know that I’ve had the immense fortune and misfortune of caring for some pretty exceptional people. I lost some of them in outrageous ways. Most of the time, it makes a hell of a story.

Some of them are lost forever.

And some of them are still around.

And all of them are always inspiring me, and always will be.

…But sometimes, I need to go back in and take out the weird thing that happened to me and that loved one—the thing that I thought belonged in this bloated script. Sometimes, I need to cut that hilarious conversation we had about pottery one Tuesday on that warm patio in the gentle spring rain, or that time they were romantic, or even a time they were horrible. Why?

Because the things that make for good memories don’t always make for good plays. Touches of real life can help a play, but they can also hurt it. You have to remember that the audience is there. They have patience, sometimes, but patience runs out.

You have to remember who you’re talking to.

3. Monologues Are the Sticks and Stones of Playwriting

Words CAN hurt you. If you write a play with a long-winded monologue on every other page, the minutes are going to pile on. And on. And on. Sometimes, there’s an easier way to say something that doesn’t require a monologue.

In this most recent draft, I had to cut one of my favorite monologues of the entire play, where a character discusses a lengthy D&D campaign she went on, all of which was a metaphor for the characters and situation of the play. I was in love with it for the following reasons:

• It set up how much the character had changed since we last saw her

• It was partially inspired by a real D&D game I’d played

• It was funny

• It contained some good exposition about what had happened since the scene before

• The fact that her scene partner didn’t say anything during it communicated that he was lost in thought and that he had changed since we last saw him as well

That’s all well and good, but reading it again, recently, I discovered that the monologue—and by extension, the entire scene—had one huge, big, unsustainable flaw…

…NONE OF THE THINGS MENTIONED IN THAT MONOLOGUE EVER COME UP AGAIN.

For that matter, the following scene further communicates the same things I want to get across, in a shorter amount of time, and doesn’t present the awkward situation of “how did the narrator know they talked about this if she weren’t there?”

What was once a 15 page scene is now considerably shorter. Do I miss the D&D monologue? Absolutely. But the play is better for it, and for the other things I’ve cut.

4. The Audience Can Only Take So Much F***ery

If you’ve read one of my scripts before… you might know that I like twists. I’ve always liked twists. One of my nicknames is Mig Night Shyamalan. (How can it be a nickname if it’s longer than the real guy’s actual name? Must be a twist!)

But yeah. I love stuff like that. I love it when a play or a movie is surprising, and I love to be a storyteller who can do that. It’s fun. And when the twist is loosely inspired on an actual twist you yourself experienced? So much the better. Nothing gives you quite the same cathartic and validating experience as when a room full of people watch someone onstage discover their whole world has been a lie, gasp, empathize with them—

—and you get to sit there in the back of the room, vindicated. You get to say to your memories, “Yeah, past Mig. That WAS insane when that happened, and that collective gasp agrees with us!” Then you can sip your wine and watch the Sept of Baelor crumble or do whatever else you need to do for your ego. Right? Oh, that delicious feeling.

But here’s the thing about twists… you pack too many of them into your play, or you don’t set them up right, and people are going to get CONFUSED.

Now, granted, there are some movies and plays that totally master the art of the confusing narrative that the audience needs to discuss. Look at Mulholland Drive, or 2001: A Space Odyssey, or anything else the guy who used to work at a video store recommends. There are some really great stories out there that exist to be dissected and analyzed like philosophical tomes. Did I write my play for that reason? Sure, a little bit. I definitely do want people to discuss their interpretations, but there’s a point when the audience just stops following.

And there’s a difference between executing a well-prepared twist, and sloppily throwing in a “Oh, and by the way here’s how the fire happened—JUST KIDDING I’m gonna give you a dream sequence that may or may not be how the fire happened—oh and did we mention that X was really Y and that A didn’t actually do B after all and that Z really had Q going on all along???”

Yeah. Guess maybe I deserve that nickname.

But for you twist fans out there, fear not. There are some shocking revelations still in the script, but I definitely toned it down to the ones that matter.

5. Be Prepared for Negative Feedback

Not everyone is going to like your play. Not all of the jokes are going to land. People might leave, or get bored, or not “get it.”

Just remember that what you’re presenting as a reading isn’t finished. It isn’t perfect. You presented it with these music stands in this library or church basement or wherever to see how the bare bones work. Can the skeleton walk? If so, good. If not, fix a couple of bones before you add the muscles and flesh to it.

Apparently plays are Frankenstein’s monster or something in this analogy? But yeah, you get it.

Don’t take it personally. When you put your show out there, you’re becoming an experience. You’re an experience people decided to have. They went with their friends to go see a reading. They didn’t come there deliberately to insult you. (And if they did, that’s messed up of them, and they probably have no life.)

6. Don’t Give Up

Your play reading might not go the way you want it to. You might think you’re untalented, and that you should give up.

Don’t do that.

I was so excited when Theatre Convivio reached out to me about doing this upcoming reading as a fundraiser for them. At first, I had doubts about the play. I wasn’t sure it was ready. But then, I took it out, dusted it off, and realized that it it could be.

And you know what? My doubts about the script? Those fit perfectly into a major theme in this play… artists having doubts about their work. It all comes together. Amazing.

So with that, I just want to shock everybody with the twist-ending of thanking the people who were vocal about their criticisms, especially while the reading was happening. While I think that talking during a play-reading is definitely something you should NOT do, I will say that the things that those people whispering behind me said during the show actually did lead me to some rewrites that helped streamline things quite a bit.

I also want to appreciate all of those people, again, who were involved with the reading back in 2017. From the spectacular cast who really brought the characters to life (especially Jamin Jollo and Aleah Zimmer) and to all of the people who sat there in the audience, braved the epic run time, and congratulated me afterwards. I didn’t believe you then. I believe you now.

Sincerely,

Mig Night Shyamalan

So, I wonder how many of you out there can relate to this story…

Once upon a time, few years ago, I was at a film festival after-party shindig of some sort, I can’t remember exactly what it was. I DO remember that there was an awesome snack platter, great wine, and all of it was free, so that’s where I was hanging out. 

At some point in the evening, sometime after listening to two guys tell me the entire plot of their sci-fi spec script and sometime before I told somebody else the entire plot of mine, a well-meaning friend introduced me to a casting director from LA. 

Wow, right? This could have been my MOMENT. My moment to say, “Hey, cast me in your thing as long as it’s not too gross! You’ll want to cast ME. I’m INTERESTING!” 

I already had the endorsement of our mutual friend, who unfortunately couldn’t stick around for long enough to talk me up, but I did my best to make a good impression. It started out exactly like most of my conversations with people do:

“So your name’s Meg?”
“Mig. With an I.” 
“Nice, what’s that short for?”

Admittedly, I can’t remember which joke I told, but it was either…

“Well my parents were really big into fighter jets but the hospital wouldn’t let them pick ‘F-18.” 
“Milligram. I was born terribly under weight.” 
“It actually stands for ‘Most Inconvenient Guest.’ My parents weren’t expecting me!”

Whatever it was, it got a laugh.

Then it was his turn to talk about himself, and I became very excited about the project he was working on. It had to do with a girl who inherits her mother’s old music store, finds her old songs, and in doing so learns about her father she had never met. Come to think of it, it was kinda like hipster Mamma Mia. 

I asked him when auditions were, where I could send my reel, whether the project was union or non-union, how many peanuts do we get paid, all the standard questions. Before he answered any of them though, he had a question for me. 

“How old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?” 

“25,” I said, with all of the pride and enthusiasm that comes with being the same age (if not gender) of most protagonists in most stories. 

“Ah,” he said with a soft chuckle. “So you’ve only got 5 years left to live.” 

“…What happens in 5 years? Do I turn into a pile of dust?” 

I laughed. That’s the thing to do when somebody says something like that, right? Laugh? He had that soft chuckle thing going on earlier, so it seemed like a laugh was what he was going for. 

But he didn’t laugh. Instead, he said:

“Basically? Yeah. Yeah you do.” 

Then he set his drink down and started talking with his hands, like he was about to launch into a TED talk or sell me an exciting new software program.

The Speech

“Look, you seem like a nice girl, and it’s good that you have one of those faces where you could be 15 or you could be 30, but the thing is that you’re breaking into this business way too late. Women just don’t make it in acting after 30. Meryl Streep is an anomaly. You’re going up against 18 year olds who’ve been in shampoo ads since they were 6. And these girls are starving themselves and slaving away at the gym to stay sexy, and there you are eating the entire snack table. And there’s nothing wrong with that! If you want to eat snacks, make films, drink wine, be funny, do it, but don’t try to go up against those other girls. You’ve only got 5 years left to catch up with them, and you’re not gonna win. Then, when you hit 30, there won’t be any roles left. You’d be lucky to get a callback for a soccer mom in a soap ad, but it’s probably gonna go to a girl who’s been in the game longer. And she may even be younger than you are. It sucks, but it’s just a reality of this business. If you’re a woman, and you’re 30, there just aren’t roles. Especially when it becomes noticeable that you’re 30. That’s it. Your acting career is dust in the wind… But hey, if you want to make your own little passion projects, you can always act in those. You’re funny. Most girls aren’t funny. Maybe you could consider being a writer, but you probably should steer clear of the acting game. That’s my advice.”

—Anonymous Casting Director / Authority on What Women Should Do with Their Acting Careers, circa 2015

I think back on that moment as if it’s a choice-based video game, and I have three dialogue options. 

Guess which one I picked? 

I’ll give you a hint; my response was:

“Well hit me up in a few years if ya need to cast a pile of dust in anything…” 

And then I DID FINGER GUNS, because apparently I was already over 30, and also a dad in the 90s.

After that, I found somebody shy and polite, and you’d best believe I subjected that poor sucker to the entire plot of my sci-fi spec script. Partly it was because it was just easier to talk about something ridiculous, like humans putting their garbage into space and the garbage turning into sentient life forms that invaaaade, leading a woman to come face-to-face with the drawings of her ex-boyfriend she thought she’d thrown away and gotten rid of once and for all, except now they are an ALIEN! (SPOILER ALERT, they bone!)

Partly, I secretly hoped the casting director might overhear me and realize that I had, in fact, been writing for years before his brilliant idea that I should be a writer. Eons. Millennia. I was certainly old enough, right? 

Eventually I left, and no amount of smiles and nods from strangers over how clever “Attack of the Space Garbage” sounded could wipe away that feeling that I was not good enough. There was no turning back time. 

There was a fierce wind blowing, and I just kept thinking to myself how frail and insubstantial I felt. Because here’s the saddest part of this story…

…This was the third year in a row that I had been 25 when I met a casting director.

No, I’m not a vampire (I don’t think…) I lie about my age. A lot of us do. I had figured 25 would be a safe number. I’d thought wrong.

Can You Imagine?

Our society idolizes and obsesses over youth and beauty, like a bunch of morons. Really, it’s kind of stupid when you think about it. Here we all are, deteriorating at a (thankfully) slow pace a little bit more each day, trying desperately to stop the wrinkles, fight the gravity, fit the standard, fool other people into thinking we’ve existed for a shorter amount of time than we actually have.

Can you imagine if the world were different? What if one day your girlfriend came running out from the bathroom excitedly, screaming, “Babe look I just got my first wrinkle! Take a pic I need to put it on Instagram! #firstwrinkle #agingisfun #stillalivebitches #ispeakinhashtags.” 

I get it though. I do. The cosmetics companies need to sell stuff and who am I to stop them? After all, painting your face is fun and more people should do it for that reason. It’s when you get into this whole mindset of “I need to look perfect. I need to look younger than 25 foreeeeeeverrrrr!” that things start to get bad. 

Since that conversation, I’ve spent a lot of my precious, dwindling time worrying that I look old. Every time I saw any sign at all in the mirror that I was aging, I’d freak out. There were even plans I canceled with people because I thought I was looking old that day. And sometimes these were plans for evening hikes— it didn’t matter, insecurities are a beast. An ugly beast. No talking furniture included.

Aftermath

So, here we are in 2019. I just turned 30. So far, no dust. But you know what? Just last year, some of my favorite movie characters crumbled into piles of dust, and I have a feeling they’ll be okay.

A lot has happened since that night I met the casting director. MeToo happened. The seediest of the seedy assholes in the business are being called out. Misogyny is slowly but surely becoming less of a norm. 

45 year old Olivia Colman and 48 year old Regina King took home Oscars the other night. Oscars which they were able to hold in their non-disintegrated hands.

Countless movies all over the world have been made since that night at that festival. Quite a lot of them featured actresses who didn’t throw in the towel when the big 3-0 hit.

During the last few years, I’ve played some great, non-dusty roles. I’ve also worked with and met casting directors who were professional, kind, and who had better, more polite, and less patronizing ways of telling me if I wasn’t right for a role.

You know what hasn’t happened in that time?

Dude’s hipster Mamma Mia movie.

Happy Birthday to Me. 

And happy birthday to all of you who’ve felt the need to lie about being younger than 30. Let’s be okay with this third decade of life. Let’s be okay with being ourselves. 

P.S. I know, “Attack of the Space Garbage” hasn’t been made yet either, so I know I’m one to talk. But you’d best believe that it will one day have a cast of mostly 30-something year old women.  Some of them will get to play actual sentient garbage, so hey, those people saying “roles for 30 year old women are garbage” wont be entirely wrong!