Pitch

I have had quite a long weekend to think about the idea for a project. Last Thursday my grandfather died. I spent the weekend with my family in Florida. It wasn’t bad, but it was hard. Having the support of and adding to that of my family made the experience all the more bearable. My grandfather was old. He was really old. He was so old that he was too old to fight in WW2 (though he did train pilots for the Air Force). He lived an exceptional life, he married a wonderful woman (whom I‘ve started to learn much more about), he raised three children, he played golf until just a couple of weeks ago, and once he met Frank Sinatra. This weekend wasn’t meant for us to mourn his passing, we celebrated his life.

This marked the first time I went to the funeral of a family member. I never thought that it could be so funny. I have been fortunate enough to not have had to experience this in the past, but it left me rather blind to the ways in which a family copes with the death of a loved one. I had not realized how crucial a role humor plays in the grieving process. There were several times that jokes were made and it was either laugh or cry, so I tried (as often as possible) to laugh, for that’s how I will always remember him, smiling even at his most pessimistic moments.

I would like to make a short based on the humor that grief requires. In my mind I like the idea of having interviews with a diverse group (as diverse as possible), I’d put out a large cattle call and ideally I could figure out how to steal a page from Errol Morris and possible figure how to rig a camera with some type of mirror/glass contraption (all I can think of is refitting Comm Studies teleprompters) so that the interviewer and the camera are the same person, I believe Morris’ wife called it the Interrotron. I think with something like that the interviewee would be more likely to immerse him- or herself completely in their memories of laughing to cope with death.

We would also interview one or two local funeral home directors to gather on their experiences and insights on the subject, I’m sure they would make for quite the interesting interviews. We could also go the direction of UNCW psych professors to see what they say about how the brain copes with loss.

I’d like the tone of this project to be heavy but humor filled. I don’t want to dwell on the pain. I’d like to capitalize on the joy of memories and the power of sharing the laughter of a lost loved one. I want this to be the filmic equivalent of a hand held in the pew, a long embrace after the service.