Punch Me in the Face.

Before we had even gotten the hang of writing a memoir I had the hubris to suggest that we simultaneously begin “holding auditions” to cast people to play our family and friends in a film adaptation of the unwritten, unpublished memoir about growing up in a theater.

We wrote poetic audition prompts. Asking people to channel parts of themselves that overlapped with personality characteristics of the role they were auditioning for. We tailored each prompt to each performer. Bespoke auditions.

And then one friend from our our hometown, Brendan Paholak; sent in a video of him dancing alone at night in a parking lot that made us cry so hard we didn’t know what to do.

The prompt we had given him was this:

“Make yourself a playlist that gets your blood pumping. Drive while listening to your playlist, to a parking lot. Improvise (and film) a dance in the parking lot that desperately squeezes everything you need out of the universe. Your state of mind is that of someone who is exploding out of their mundane routine. Movement should be filled with pent up rage, raw sexual potential, unexpressed joy, self-love, love for others that makes you feel so vulnerable you can barely stand it. Feel free to get weird.”

We didn’t do anything with his video or the prompt or the memoir for a couple years. And when we finally watched it again the sobbing resumed.

At which point all sorts of other personal situations conspired so that Ana and I decided it was now or never; she wrote a script for a short film and fundraised for it and we just did it. Come hell and high water.

We named it “Punch Me in the Face”