Stories can come from any and all places if you have the drive and the passion to find a way to tell them. No matter the age, no matter the experience, stories can speak for themselves if you have the willingness to make that story come to life. “Talk to Me” was the product our desire to tell a story and, more importantly, to make a difference. Still only a teenager and soon entering adulthood, there is plenty I still have to learn about the world. To me however, there is no point in sitting idly by and waiting for adulthood to start to do something and to start to make a difference. So that’s exactly what we are all trying to do. “Talk to Me” comes from our own personal experiences dealing with friends who have thought about suicide, from people that we know who continue to battle suicidal thoughts, and people that we knew who have taken there own lives. All our age, all just in high school. It comes from our knowledge of the pressures of high school and how developing teenagers have very little understanding about how to effectively find an output for the stress, the anxiety, the anger, the sadness, and the emotion that everyone feels, regardless of the situation. We spent months making sure that this story was authentic to the message we wanted to tell and that we could use this film to reach out to anyone, but especially people struggling with suicidal thoughts.
“Talk to Me” is a story about a Fathers inability to be honest with his son, and honest with himself. After a heated argument at the dinner table, the Father takes his sons phone as punishment for his behavior. Later, the Father receives a phone call on his sons phone from a girl on the verge of suicide. Forced to look within himself, the Father must try and save the suicidal girl on the other end of the line, ultimately changing his life forever.
This film means the world to me and to every single person who has worked on it. The team has spent the better part of a year making this project into a reality, and making sure the people who we made this for, the people we are representing, every single teenager in the world who has ever thought about suicide, every parent who just loves their kid, any one who has lost a friend or love one due to suicide. We made this film so people could know that honesty, and communication, and talking to the ones you love is the way to fight it. Having that one person, that on confidant who you can tell anything to. Honesty and communication is the only way to fight teenage suicide. Teenagers have to know that despite all of the stress, all the judgment, and all of the emotion, being able to talk to someone, someone you trust, someone you love, that is how we fight suicide. That is how we mend deep wounds. That is how we grow simply as people.
What the team and I have made is something emotional and genuine that we feel can truly move people. And hopefully, we can.