When Devi Snively, writer/directrix of Deviant Productions, said she wanted to make a movie of my short story, “Return to Sender,” I about wet my pants. Is this how Hollywood discoveries happen?!
We shot the film in The Villages, Florida. During the planning process, I told Devi (pronounced Day-vi) I thought I knew where I could get a pink golf cart, a clown, a classic Ford Thunderbird, and knew a good spot for the picnic scene, as well as the swimming pool and nightclub scenes. Devi said, “You sound like a producer.” Whoops, I didn’t plan to get that involved.
Devi arrived in Florida on day one. On day two we gathered actors from The Villages’ theater groups, did screen tests, and selected the cast for ten days of intense shooting. Tedious is a better word than intense because each nine-hour day required dozens of shots from various angles for segments that lasted only seconds in the film.
The movie is very short. Although it involves twenty different scenes with 24 cast members, it only runs seven minutes and 47 seconds. Amazingly, it tells the story rather effectively in that short time. Our film, renamed with a title I’m embarrassed to confess (you’ll see), was shown at the Silver Springs International Film Festival to an enthusiastic audience. The production crew, including yours truly, was invited on stage following the showing for a brief Q and A.
I actually first wrote this tale in Indiana while meeting with a writers group made up of several Indiana University graduate students studying for MFA degrees. All were in their early 20s. In my story, it’s obvious the two main characters have been intimate. When I read the last line where the leading lady says, “Oh, Howard, you sure know how to make an 80-year-old feel like a kid again.” The 20-year-olds started gasping and gagging. Reading that same story later in The Villages with its senior age population, when I got to that line, they said, “Yeah, so?”
Enjoy the film https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVVv34iVvsY