The Reception, starring Richard Kind and Skipp Sudduth.
When I was a kid, we learned that animals have two responses to danger: Fight or flight. Then, we discovered a third response: Freeze.
I was so relieved when this “freeze” state was identified because that’s the shameful state I live in when confronted by danger. I stop everything and hope it goes away.
My paralysis is caused by having been wrong about so many things so many times in my life. I don’t think I’ve been more wrong than most, I think being wrong is fundamental to being human. The truth is often not binary, in most cases, and the complexity of even the simplest of problems is actually a Gordian knot of endless entanglements — So much so that we can be simultaneously wrong and right at once, a maddening condition.
When I was a boy, I read comic books set in WW2. I imagined myself bravely fighting Nazis by shooting at them or throwing grenades at them. But then, as an adult, I watched Nazis in my country march in the streets and chant slogans like “Blood and Soil” and I did not know what to do. My turgid fantasies of warfighting went flaccid. I was not ready to pick up a gun, far from it. And I suddenly understood that life, even when Nazis are afoot, is immensely more complicated.
Fighting them would be wrong. But not fighting them also feels wrong. Since I could do neither, I wrote a short film, The Reception, about the space between right and wrong, where fight and flight both seem impossible and all we can do is freeze.
If, like me, you feel frozen when the world is going mad, this film is for you. If, unlike me, you possess relentless moral clarity and act without hesitation, you might find it interesting to see how the rest of us feel. And if you are a coward who never stops to think and simply runs away, well, you probably haven’t read this far, but I wish you luck. And, if you’re a Nazi, fuck off.
Please watch The Reception, starring Richard Kind and Skipp Sudduth, written and directed by me. I made it for you. If you watch it, let me know what you think. And if you like it, please share it.
Sean Sakamoto