It’s daylight, and a family competes from their home with their infant, unsure if they will ever be able to come back.
That scene is the climax that “did not die”, an indie zombie film premiere in midnight section at SundanceBut it is also the reality that director Meera Menon, cinematic and writer Paul Gleason (and Menon’s husband), and producer Erica Fishman had to deal with earlier this month when they fled from their Altadena homes because of Eaton Fire in Los Angeles.
“Don’t Die” is a movie about managing tragedy, finding out how to pass the time, endure and most of all lives, not just survive, before an apocalypse. During the weeks leading up to the festival, “does not die” film creators did just that. Each of their home was burned completely into the fires, both Menon and Gleason are on the eastern side of Altadena near Eaton Canyon, as well as Fishmans on the west side of the city four miles away from where the fires began.
In an even more surreal twist, the child is shown in the movie Menon and Gleason’s actual daughter. And the home where several scenes of “did not die” are managed are the same Altadena -home that is now lost. The images seen by it in the film, including several who are staged as black and white, 8mm, childhood home films before the zombie apocalypse began, are some of the last records they have about their home.
“The 8 mm pictures, which are supposed to emulate a memory, are in fact a memory of something that is lost,” Gleason told IndieWire. “The levels of weirdness and strange serendipity are difficult to formulate, and probably something we will process for a while.”
Indiewire spoke to Menon, Gleason and Fishman Over Zoom, with Menon wearing a USC shirt that had been donated as part of Fire Relief. A week before the fires began on January 7, the team, including editor and fish man partner Geoff Boothby, had delivered a last DCP to Sundance. A week removed, they were still eager to attend the festival (the movie is for sale) and be with a supportive community of people. But in addition, the film offers some bitter -sweet comfort.
“We all four were nervous about it, but I actually thought it was comforting to see that it is still in this movie,” Menon said. “Since the strangest part of the whole thing is just, it’s all gone. It feels surreal to think about all this, not just our home, a whole society’s value of home, just gone. So there is something comforting to see that there was. It wasn’t just a dream. ”
Eaton Fire almost literally started in Menon and Gleason’s Backyard, visible to them before it was over the news. Menon and Gleason were evacuated to Fishman’s house on the other side of the city. They stayed a couple of days before moving again to El Segundo, but it was at that time that Fishman realized that she needed to leave as well. She packed a few things, took her cat and dog and went to a house in North Hollywood after a friend texted her to “just come over. Don’t be stupid. ”
“A lot in the movie Spirit, we just showed up in the living room like, ‘Hello, can we sleep here? Now we have this child, ”Fishman said. “These types of things feel really strange and so strange is similar to the movie.”
Memories like Gleason and Menon have from the day of the fire are cinematic. To illustrate how close they were for the danger has an outer shot in the movie from their lawn Eaton Canyon in the background.
“We had just gone in the canyon with our daughter before. It was a beautiful day. The winds were cold, and the air was warm, and we took some of the most beautiful pictures and had an incredible memory, ”Gleason said. “And I was in the garage where we had filmed a lot of this, and suddenly we had no power, and the door suddenly opened. Meera is with our daughter, Lakshmi, and she is like “The Canyon’s on Fire”, and the cognitive connection there. I looked at it and it was just, oh no, we have to leave now. There is no time to think. So we just threw our dog and our daughter into our car and drove. ”
“We didn’t even know where we were going when we pulled out of the driveway. It was so fast we moved, ”Menon added.
The good news is that everyone was safe, from their pets to their children. But also the hard drives for “DI did not die”, strange one of their last possessions. Before they came to Park City, they took the time to visit the remains of their homes, donate paint suits and masks to strain through what is left and to be able to get some closure.
The film’s premiere should give another dose of closure. Within 48 hours, both couples of children were dressed with compartments, Sundance had asked them for their sizes to give them additional clothes, and they joked the only thing they really needed was that a time machine would be more prepared. In the end, the filmmakers are ready to move on to the next thing.
“I think the only thing you can do in these times is to move forward and put one foot in front of the other,” Menon said. “And this is the next thing we would do. So we’ll do it. “
Of course, Menon hopes that the audience likes it and that the film finds a distributor, but Menon said that “does not die” now is “too meaningful” for them not to find out what is next for it. For them, the film’s message is that “loss is survivors”, and you can find meaning and beauty again.
“We have strangely been overwhelmed by gratitude, not sadness,” Menon said. “For the most part we feel grateful, and then we have these moments of grief, but we have so much support, it is difficult not only to be bent by that gratitude and feel so much stronger that attention and support must be directed at people as Do not have these support networks. ”
“We have so much to look forward to in the short term, and things will work okay,” Gleason added. “It is a tragedy that is so much larger than this micro story that we have to tell. And I am grateful that we have our friends and our family. There is a rhyme to everything that happens, and it reminds you of how happy you are, and if that is what we can go away with, it is actually a great reminder. ”
“Di DO NOT DOING” premiere on Tuesday January 28 at the Sundance Film Festival.
