Do It Anyway

It’s March 2025, and I’ve done something equally wonderful and terrible. I haven’t been truly able to sleep for weeks. It’s the most self-absorbed, tacky, and main character shit I could ever fathom doing. And yet, I had to do it.

I began production of my first microbudget indie film. As director, writer, bit part actor, hell—even craft services.

The year before, I had written a microbudget horror called Feed Fifi with any location I thought I might have access to in mind. I had been inspired by adopting a new shy cat who was deeply afraid of me for our first month together and hid under my bed—except for when we were all asleep at night, and she’d zoomie around the living room, having the time of her life.

While the clangs and clatters from my room could be a bit unsettling, it was quite easy to roll over and blame anything and everything on my little speedster cat. That led me to think … a person could be in a creepy/haunted house for a long time without realizing something spooky is going on … If there’s a cat! And Feed Fifi was born.

The script came together in my writing group and polished up nicely. I had passed it around to some reps I knew and contacts, but the industry … being the industry as of late, has been distracted and stressed, and not a single contact read it. Contacts I had made 6 months prior were out of the industry in different lines of work. Projects I had put on hiatus during the writer’s strike with interested production companies were dead in the water when it was over. Frustrating, but necessary steps in the industry.

This is where I should say one deeply cynical thing that perhaps fuels how I work. If you don’t want some butterflies about being a writer and/or filmmaker, feel free to stop here.

Meritocracy does not exist.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s a very nice concept that each person can be evaluated on their talent and nothing else, but there is no actual infrastructure to do this realistically in our modern society. There is no endless bandwidth to be able to measure everyone, nor is there a consensus on what core elements define one’s talent. And last, sadly, there is no need to measure everyone in what is an oversaturated market.

In the indie film world, this was summarized best by Mark Duplass’ speech in his 2015 SXSW address: “The cavalry’s not coming.”

What a painful truth that is—at least has been for me—that you can toil and care tirelessly on a story, and the world is simply too busy, too over-extended, too caught up in their own toils to care. And yet, it’s one I needed to hear in my head, over and over, to simply not let Feed Fifi sit with my other dusty specs in a drawer.

If you’re going to make something into existence, the burden is … painfully, but delightfully, on yourself.

How did I do this? Well, nothing happens in a bubble—so I’m not going to pretend I didn’t lean on resources I had access to. I reached out to classmates I went to school with—actors I had met, and friends I zoomed with during the pandemic. I blurted out to all of them: “I’m going to make Feed Fifi.” I’m sure 99% of them thought I was a fool, but a determined fool who refused to accept another reality. I built out a schedule, a rough budget that rapidly fluctuated. I set aside money from my paychecks teaching as an adjunct professor to buy and craft props. I took out several loans from my family. Real—I Have to Pay You Back—loans. Formed an LLC, got a company credit card.

I couldn’t get a rep to read Feed Fifi, sure, but I found several actors willing, hungry as I was to make. Do not sit and wait a second longer for something to happen. We were going to make it happen together.

And so, I found myself on a plane to Florida, to shoot in my partner’s parents’ house—now empty. We lived in and shot the location for two weeks before flying up to Virginia to shoot in my producer’s mom’s house out by the Chesapeake Bay. We lived off Wawa and Publix popcorn.

And we shot a movie.

I’m in post production now—a slower process when you pay little by little for each step of the post. I wish in some ways it was done now, so I can end the year with a big wave of triumph. But every step of the way has been a slow, inevitable act of defiance against everything that makes this process like molasses.

I will get there.

I am eternally grateful for the team of people who were willing to take the leap of faith with me—that came together because, at the end of the day, we just love making movies. Some of these people I had never met before they stepped foot on my set. They were folks who saw an ad on a Facebook group or got recommended by a friend of a friend.

Statistically, Feed Fifi isn’t going to make me a millionaire or turn into an indie darling with a Fox Searchlight logo ahead of it. But she’s real, she exists—and for that, I am a stronger filmmaker and storyteller. I will never regret making this film.

You don’t have to like my writing, my films, or even me as a person to let this next part sink in:

What are you working on as a creative? And why aren’t you doing it?

Please, for the love of all that is good in this world, you need to make your thing. You need to give it the time and the love and the focus and the passion, and you need to do it because otherwise there will be an ache within you that will never find peace.

What you’re making could be silly, or rudimentary, or simply… not good. And that’s okay. We are makers. And it includes taking all those risks … and swallowing our fear (and our pride) and doing it anyway.

Do it within your means.

Do it within the wee hours your busy life demands of you.

Do it when you feel like you suck.

Do it when you feel like no one hears or sees you.

Do it BECAUSE no one hears or sees you.

Do it as a ‘fuck you’ to everything in this world that tries to dampen your spark.

And lastly, do it for yourself.

Because we only get to be alive once on this weirdo little blue and green planet … and if not now … when?

And when you do it—tell the next creative soul, like I am right now, just how important it is to do it—in spite of everything—anyway.

*Feature image by Siam (Adobe)