51 backers, 36% of the targeted goal, and 27 days left. Two kids from South Florida, now in the heart of the film industry, have an indiegogo page that is well on its way to reaching its goal and being able to fund a movie with heart, humor, family drama, a wedding turned upside-down, and a whole lot of love. Written by Matthew Schlissel and Directed by Verner Maldonado, The Father is about an ex-con who crashes his daughter’s wedding so he can walk her down the aisle, only to find no one wants him there. How the film came to be is even a story in itself.
It All Started With A Photograph
3000 miles apart, we always talked about what would be our next project. Verner wanted to direct one of my short scripts, almost as bad as I wanted to write for him. I said, GIVE ME A DEADLINE. And so he did. Of course at midnight, the night before it was due, I started writing….only to realize the short I planned on writing for him was not working—I didn’t want to write some generic piece of crap, I wanted this to be GOOD! Better than good. I wanted him to read this and WEEP! And so I went with another idea I had lingering in the back of my mind: A photograph he took a month prior that I could not get out of my mind. An older gentlemen in a suit and dark shades walking away from something painful, underneath a gloomy cloud of palm trees, trying desperately to keep his broken self moving. I had only come up with the premise and an image I wanted for the end, but I knew it meant something to me.
So I chugged a red bull and WROTE LIKE MY LIFE DEPENDED ON IT. From 12:30 am to 4:30 am I did nothing but write, no breaks, and when I got to FADE OUT I knew I had something I was proud of. It wouldn’t be until a month later–a stroke of luck, or an act of god–that brought Verner out to California for an unexpected job to work at Sony Studios on a new primetime NBC show. First night he flew in, we opened up our laptops, started revising the script and said – WE’RE MAKING THIS!
– Matthew S.
A Race Against Time
With 27 days left in our campaign, we have great momentum happening and it will only continue to rise. We take no chances on this project and hope you will consider being a part of it with us. We have discovered throughout this campaign that it takes a lot to make a little, but it’s the little donations that are going to add up and make this a film put together by a large group of people who care and believe what we believe: Short films can be an instrumental way of telling heartfelt and impactful stories in a short amount of time. Thank you for taking the time to learn about this project.
