ThroTTLE Magazine, 1993, 1994. Now an obscure ‘zine accessible only via a library archive. That’s the only place you could find mention of one man’s film career. Or really any career at all. A man who disappeared for a decade and then re-emerged to try and ruin my own career in the not-so distant past. Twenty years my senior, he was someone I knew as a college student, now claiming that I was stealing his life’s work. After not responding to my emails for years, he suddenly had plenty of his own messages to send. He even went after my collaborators, blasting off emails with text in all caps. His wife must’ve hired the lawyer who mailed me the cease and desist because when I knew him, he was a strung-out pizza man renting a basement in the suburbs. Now he apparently had a magnum opus on his hands. Despite knowing I was in the right, I decided to wash my hands of him and all of the footage we shot together when I was an undergrad. I’d made movies before, including ones written about in The Brooklyn Rail and streaming on Amazon and Tubi. My friends and I would shoot a totally new movie.
That project became Her Garden, an experimental feature with the aesthetics of a damaged VHS tape. Meagan J. Meehan wrote the narration, a first-person, diaristic type of story that deals with mental health, mermaids, and love. Jacob Maximillian Baron and I went off into the wilds of New York City to shoot it. The story called for urban decay and I knew precisely where to find it: abandoned lots that stretched for hundreds of yards, dilapidated buildings akin to castles, kudzu-covered remnants of wars past. Somehow, we even stumbled into a haunted house attraction a few months before Halloween. The founder enjoyed setting up far in advance to make it as elaborate as possible with his small team and modest budget. It shocked even me, the ever-resourceful filmmaker, that we could get so lucky.
Actor Aaron Gold came in for a cameo, including a beach scene where he ended up with 50 mosquito bites. You don’t see that in the movie. You’d only know it from us telling you, but trust us when I say we counted every single one. Ro Rovito also helped bring the movie to completion by providing additional editing, which was led by Baron. As far as I can tell, Rovito did not get bitten by mosquitos in the process.
Together, Meehan, Baron, Gold, Rovito, and I made something that far surpassed what I had imagined for the movie that began as pandemic tinkering. Her Garden was born and quickly amassed more than 17K views on YouTube. It’s been a year since I released the movie online and I’m so happy that it continues to find an audience. The whole ordeal bringing the movie into the world reminded me that I can finish whatever I set my mind to. Things might not always go as planned, but that’s only an invitation to pivot. A cease and desist couldn’t stop Her Garden. It only changed what the movie became, and for that I’m proud.
I’ve gone on to make several films and even more videos in a short time since Her Garden came out last year. Much of that came because of the push of Columbia Journalism School, which I graduated from in May. The other films are more narrative and far less experimental in nature than Her Garden. I’ll mention three of them. Making its film festival circuit is 5 Ways I Didn’t Marry You, an artsy rom-com directed by Tom Dunn. It just got into the New York Shorts International Film Festival and will be screened at Cinema Village next month. A couple of weeks ago, Baron and I wrapped up production on Canarsie Pier, a slightly magical slice of life film that he directed and is editing now. I’m in the earliest stages of pre-production for Shanda, which Gold and I co-wrote and Dunn will be directing.
Maybe mosquitos didn’t bite me that day Gold and I shot the Her Garden beach scene, but the movie-making bug certainly did.
Watch the full ‘Her Garden’ movie here:
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