Everyone Asked about you

*IMAGES USED IN CAMPAIGN VISUAL REFERENCE MONTAGE ARE FROM THE FOLLOWING FILMS: 'A Woman Under the Influence,' 'Carnal Knowledge,' 'The Ballad of Cable Hogue,' 'Five Easy Pieces,' 'Last Tango in Paris' and a Nancy Sinatra fashion shoot.

‘Everyone Asked About You’ is a film that boldly plunges into the dark predatory underbelly of the movie business. 

“Simone Deville” hit it big as a beloved child star on a popular television show. But, as is so often the case, we come to find out that all was not so bright for young “Simone.”  Parental neglect and reckless exposure to toxic lifestyles ultimately led to molestation by a co-star and a spiraling adult career of sexual objectification and endless compromise. 

Our film finds "Simone" retreating from the world in her Hollywood bungalow. Her longtime producing partner and lover, "Jack Downey," has been both her greatest champion and the demon she cannot resist...or quit. When financiers threaten to pull their funds from a film that the couple is developing, "Jack" puts "Simone" in a position that finally breaks her spirit and destroys her trust in him.

We open backstage at a children's beauty pageant just before young "Simone" steps out into the spotlight that will set her on her path to the blinding glare of Hollywood. It is through these flashbacks that we learn how and why the couple now burrow in her bungalow examining where they went wrong. At what cost her stardom? Where did they go wrong? How did their mutual desire become their downfall? Was "Simone" doomed from the start or was her fate set in motion by the actions of people who were trusted to look out for her?

‘Everyone Asked About You’ is an opportunity to sound the alarm and send a message that child actors need protection in an adult work environment and that female artists deserve the respect and dignity provided by roles achieved through hard work and talent rather than sexual bartering and soul-destroying submissive capitulation. 

On my last film, ‘Rosebud Lane,’ I had the privilege to direct  two child actors. Providing them a safe, nurturing, supportive work environment was a top priority from day one. The fact that that seemingly obvious requirement has been compromised and abused in the shadows since the beginning of Hollywood sickens me. This predatory stain on the industry I love is unforgivable - and it must be stamped out. 

I am a big fan of the films that I grew up on in the 1970s.  I have become a voracious student of the filmmakers  whom they were inspired by, most specifically French New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Jean-Pierre Melville; and Italian Neo-realists Roberto Rossellini and Michelangelo Antonioni. 

What these filmmakers all had in common was a rigid understanding that film is a visual medium: when and how the camera moves, appreciation of stillness and silence, attention to detail in art department & composition and lighting concepts so as to inform the viewer through imagery rather than verbose expository dialogue. 

'Everyone Asked About You' will display these mature storytelling principles. Our story is one that could recklessly lean toward graphic sexual imagery and disturbing monstrous character demonstrations. Our filmmaking team will tell our story with sophisticated restraint, leaving the grotesque behavior and actions more to the imagination than gratuitous exploitation.

Thank you for choosing to join our team by making a contribution to a genuinely autonomous independent film that looks to speak truth to power like only Indie films can. 

John Lacy

Writer-Director ‘Everyone Asked About You’

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0480381/