Before the End

The past and present intertwine in a moment of re-connection for an estranged older couple in New York City.

Director: Bram VanderMark
Producer: Sacha Noelle
Starring: Godfrey J Rayner as Gerry, Josephine Pizzino as Ruby, Eli Perdew as Young Gerry, and Kristalyn Gill as Young Ruby
Director of Photography: Wei Han
1st AC: Matt Iacuna
2nd AC: Kaya Tone
Production Designer: Pili Weeber
PA / BTS Photographer: Giselle Keena

Editor: Bram VanderMark
Composer: Ian McLeod – Cleod9 Music
Sound Design: Scotty Beam – Cleod9 Music
Color: Jacob McKee – Forager
Title Design: Emma Yergat
Film Process and Scan: Metropolis Post

Special thanks to Contrast Films

18 months ago I had wine with an older couple in my building. They had been asking me for weeks and weeks to come have a glass and hear old stories about the neighborhood. I was so excited to do so, but it just became one of those things I had shelved in the back of my to-do’s. Eventually, after running into them in my lobby again, I decide, “Tonight is the night.” I had one of the best nights I’ve ever had in NYC. Now in their late 60s, they told me story after story of their early NYC days in the 1970s. They met at a ballet audition, fell in love, and performed a street act together in Greenwich Village. Their adventures spanned decades, but I was especially moved by the story of how they met. I was so struck by this, I left and could not stop thinking about it. After failing to convince them to let me shoot a doc piece about them, I decided instead to make a scripted short inspired loosely by this story. We shot in one day, in my own apartment.