A few thoughts on the response to "SEND"

SEND (2010) from Trifecta+ Entertainment on Vimeo.

I sort of feel like trying to write a really good story is a bit like conducting surgery while blindfolded. You hack away at the thing, hoping you don't hit an artery and kill it. You try to find the infected appendix or whatever it is you're looking for by touch alone and take it out.

And sometimes your hand slips and you stick your scalpel into a bundle of raw nerves.

That seems to be what's happened with "SEND."

I went to see a play back in August -- "Trust," by Stephen Dietz -- and I was floored by this one scene. One character confronts another about his infidelity. Glasses are thrown. Accusations are hurled. And my jaw was on the floor.

The actress in that scene was Amelia Ampuero, and I immediately had the thought that I wanted to do a movie with her where I would just put the camera on her face and let her do her thing. It seemed sort of crazy, like something you think about and right away realize won't work at all.

But then -- and this is just the way my brain works, folks -- I suddenly had this image of her covered in blood and talking about eating a rat. To steal my favorite metaphor from Stephen King, my Muse took a big old crap on the top of my head and the idea was there, whole and pretty much fully formed.

That's it. I initially thought this would just be a little web video, something I could post quickly while we were finishing up some of our larger projects. I figured it would be, at most, ten minutes long. I hammered out a draft that came out to about thirteen pages, sent it to a few friends for feedback, and contacted Amelia to see if she was interested.

Once Amelia agreed to do it, I incorporated some of the notes I had gotten from friends and started fleshing out the script. It began to bloat over the coarse of a few drafts, ending up at about twenty pages. A little long for a web video, but whatever. It would still be super easy to shoot, which was what I was looking for at that moment. Some people would stick with it, I figured, and some wouldn't.

As far as the content itself, as I saw the story taking shape I realized this had the potential to be a really striking and unsettling little film if we did it right. I liked that. I thought the movie would fuck with people. That's good. I like to fuck with people.

The shoot went well. Amelia was incredible, as I knew she would be. Mary's makeup was stunning. I started thinking that maybe this was a bit more of a "real" film than I had initially figured it would be.

I sort of knew I had a tiger by the tail when I started editing it last Monday. Amelia's performance was absolutely riveting. I found myself just sitting and watching it rather than working on it.

But I still had no idea.

After I posted it on Friday, I watched as the number of views climbed up to 100...then 300...then suddenly 1,500...3,600...finally over 6,000. Over 80 people reposted it on Facebook. An untold number sent the link to their friends via email. It wasn't exactly viral, but it was on its way.

Then the emails started rolling in. Amongst all the "way to go"s and "that was awesome"s that you expect to get from your friends, I started getting email after email from people I didn't know. Most of them seemed to be from women, many of them mothers. They all told me the movie made them cry. One woman told me that, immediately after watching it, she went and hugged her kids and then called her husband while he was at work to tell him she loved him. Yet another told me the movie was making her "rethink the way I'm living my life."

To which my response was "...uh...what?"

And then I got this email this morning:

"hi. you dont know me. a friend sent me a link to your movie Send and I just felt like i had to write to you to express my gratitude. I felt you made this movie about me. a year ago i split up with my husband. It has been a nasty divorce and i have at times even contemplated suicide, only not doing it because of my kids. but then I saw your movie and it made me realize what is important, and i cannot thank you enough. thank you thank you thank you"

(I wrote back and asked the sender -- who will remain anonymous -- if I could reprint that here. She said yes.)

I just don't know what to say to that.

I don't want to overstate this. I know we didn't cure cancer or anything. We made a movie. I guess all I can say is that I'm absolutely floored, humbled, and completely overwhelmed by the response. As a writer and filmmaker I've never experienced anything remotely like it before.

One thing I absolutely must say, though, is that I refuse to take credit. Sure, I think I wrote a pretty good script. But I had help from friends, who were not shy about telling me what worked and what didn't.

Really, this movie only exists because of Amelia. It was watching her on stage that inspired me to write it, and it was her performance in the film that, I believe, has led to the response that it has had.

And, of course, there's my beloved Trifecta team. There's Mary's makeup. You truly have to see it to believe it. There were Bust's costumes and guns, which is what gives that last scene the boxer's punch that it has. And -- even though I sort of shot this one myself -- there was Corey's invaluable advice and help with the lighting.

Beyond that, I don't really have anything else to say. I really, honestly had no idea. Sometimes you just stick your blade into a bundle of nerves, that's all.