The Story Behind 3.5
Two years ago while Riding my bicycle Across the George Washington Bridge
(connects between NY and NJ) I saw a distress Guy in the middle of the bridge, I stopped my bike and he told me about a Young woman that just Jumped off the bridge. when we looked down we saw a Boat pulling the woman out of the Hudson River. the Boat was on the scene so quickly because they were looking for a Body of a man that jumped just 3 days before. a few days later I learned that the woman was the 3rd person to ever survive the 200-foot drop. the news report also said that she broke all limbs and was recovering at an NY hospital, reading that I couldn't stop thinking about what happens to someone that reached the point of suicide and then fails just to be bound to a bed and having to face everything they were running away from...
After a few days, I told my Friend Stacey Van Gorder Leung about it and she offered to write a Screenplay based on the story, since we are both very Busy it took a while but eventually we finished Shooting that Short with the Help of some of our great friends, Stacey played the lead role and helped cast the rest of the Actors.
some other friends did Sound and helped with lighting, I shot, edited and Directed this little Passion projects and recently at the GOLDEN DOOR INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
we won 3 prizes:
Best concept of a short Film
Best Actor in a Short film: Dan Reiser
Best Actress in a short film: Stacey Van Gorder Leung (that also produced and wrote the film)
the name of the film is based on the statistic we discovered: until December 2017 there was a suicide attempt off the GWB every 3.5 days.
During the summer of 2017 (when we shot the film), there was an upsurge of suicides which made the port authority install a preventive Fence to stop the jumpers, Since we shot before that the film shows how easy it was to leap over before...