Coming-of-age horror comedy short Reed Gig is about a son who recklessly loses his bassoon reed the night before his audition for Juilliard, while his dad walks off to stumble on a fateful encounter.
Both father and son experience a rite-of-passage night, realizing their love can bring them to break away from each other. But dealing with the missing reed makes it very difficult.
Director Statement: When I started writing Reed Gig, it came from intense circumstances I’d had with my kids.
Nightmares I could never imagine, which I turned into amusing anecdotes we all came out of trauma-free and cracking-up. These stories comprise our family nostalgia pantheon to this day.
I want the audience to see an endearing complex intergenerational relationship lived in full, so we can all notice and embrace magical moments as opportunities for change and growth when we run into them in real life.
Parenting is a roller coaster we’re mostly sentimental about only in hindsight. But when dived into fearlessly and playfully, it provides great opportunities for parents to evolve emotionally and creatively.
This film is important to me because it shows a sensitive, emotionally-aware and curious father living a life in which his child is a driving force in his own individual character development as an adult – a father image we rarely see on screen.
