In Development

The space in-between

There’s the version of filmmaking that gets presented publicly.
And then there’s the reality.

Public version:
A film is “in development.” Meetings are happening. Interest is building. Momentum.

Reality:
You’re sending emails into a carefully researched void. You follow up, questioning whether you’re saying the right thing, to the right person, at the right time. You hold onto small signs—an encouraging response, a promising conversation, an open door—as if they might become something real.

Right now, Angels Twice Descending exists in that space. The script is written. And rewritten. And rewritten again.

There have been meaningful responses—people who see the potential, who are open to reading, who say, “Come back when there’s more packaging,” which is both encouraging and… vague.

So now the work is building that “more”: finding collaborators, clarifying the vision, and continuing to give shape to why this matters—not only to me, but to those who’ve reached out to say, “This is a film I really want to see.”

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When I started writing on Substack recently, I expected to hear mostly from women. I was surprised to hear from men. Not to stake out a position, but to share experiences that have stayed with them. Events shaped by abortion, by faith, by time. What’s consistent is not the answers they arrived at, but having experiences that never resolved into something they could set aside. Something lived has stayed with them, something they’re still turning over. Instead of hardening into certainty, some part of them has remained open—held in a lingering ambiguity between relief and loss, where something can be necessary and still not simple. A right decision can still carry residue. The experience isn’t resolved; it’s absorbed, continuing to shape how they see and feel.

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That’s not weakness or confusion. It’s an arrived-at capacity to remain in relationship to something that matters without closing it down. That’s a powerful place to get to. It suggests depth and an openness to complexity, to the discomfort that tends to get shut down rather than stayed with.

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This is the space the film watches: within a marriage shaped by faith, where belief and conscience begin to pull a husband and wife in different directions.

In Kathy, there’s a growing capacity to stay with something that doesn’t resolve—to remain in relationship to it even as it becomes more difficult.

In Lyle, what he carries forward is driven by unresolved hurt—the past pressing into the present, shaping what he feels compelled to do in ways that cause increasing harm to others.

The film doesn’t argue between them.
It stays with both.

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Making it asks the same thing.
To stay with something that doesn’t resolve.
One minute there’s excitement; the next, I’m wondering if I should have my head examined. Nothing is visible yet, but everything’s in motion.

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I’m sharing this because it’s easy to assume that projects either exist or they don’t—that without something tangible, it’s all hat and no cattle.
But most of the real work happens in this in-between—where there’s more felt than there is to point to.

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I’m in.
If you’re here reading this, you’re witnessing the film before it exists.
Popcorn’s coming. I promise.