writing "A Good Person"

how do we continue sometimes, we humans?

“How do you spell aneurysm?!” – yelled my 80 year old father to a silent ICU waiting room with his iPhone five inches from his face. The rest of the family swung their eyes from the stained ceiling tiles or the lone fish in the half-full fish tank or the dusty ficus planted in Styrofoam. Once we’d collectively joined gazes there was a pause and then we all began to belly laugh. It came out of nowhere. Then tears from laughter. My sister was three walls away on life-support after a blood vessel had popped in her brain while showering. She was 44. She is gone now.

To be fair, aneurysm is a tricky word to spell. Close your eyes and try, it’s not likely the first thing you assumed.

My new film, “A Good Person,” isn’t that story. But I am drawn to how we human beings stand back up again after our lowest lows. How we first crawl, then wobble, then one day are able to walk again after forever on the floor.

I lost my best friend to Covid while he was living in my home. He was 41 and left behind a one year old baby named Elvis and a wife we were warned not to hug. She wept on the floor in a ball, so we got down on the floor too… to be closer, without being too close. He is gone now.

How do we continue sometimes, we humans? That’s what I sat down to write about during the pandemic. How would my friend’s wife ever recover? How would Earth ever recover from this plague?  And how do you even make a film about this without it being too maudlin and raw?

I have always aspired to infuse my writing with a mix of heartbreak and humor. That’s the kind of story I personally Iike best: tell me the truth, even if it hurts, then please God give me a chance to laugh through that pain. Please let me see myself reflected back; my sorrow, my dark humor that aspires to throw some light.  When I see that you feel it too, it makes me feel so much less alone.

“A Good Person” is about loss, love, addiction, family, fate, friendship and most importantly, that 4 letter lifeline that things will (could) maybe get a little better: Hope. Where it comes from (much like your first attempt at spelling aneurysm) might not be your first guess.

My film is about two strangers who never in a thousand years would have become friends, but on this day, in this world, they save each other from themselves.

You can watch A Good Person now on Amazon, YouTube, iTunes, Google Play.