The Tribes Project, INC

When Rob ended his life in 2017 – I was plagued for years by the simple perplexing question: WHY? I simply could not wrap my mind around a logic or rationale that would fit the description of Rob taking himself out of the game on purpose – it could just never compute, and it still doesn’t. And it doesn’t matter, even if I somehow answered the unanswerable question “why” it would not heal any wounds nor bring anyone back.

Once I got past this conundrum, that is the question why – I finally started to see another path of remembrance – to honor the man is to conjure him. But not a biography, “just the facts” would never suit, nor satisfy the totality of Rob – far too much trickster lived within him. The mandate then became a process of creating a story that sends us both up, that plays with us, hints, tickles, smirks, winks, and allows for wide adaptation but yet remains true to the core. A core of deep understanding that comes from not just an immense variety of shared life experience, but also those unspoken ties that bond forever.

So – Who the heck is Harsh Gruder? Harsh is a fictional character created by Rob and me. In the mid-90s Rob and I would get together on a fairly regular basis to write stories together. The collaborative stories were created “exquisite corpse” style – paragraph for paragraph we would write and pass back and forth. Reading aloud as we went was the hilarity of it, we would constantly be trying to one-up each other in sheer story audacity, with metaphoric madness and similes coming on as fast and furious as a Vin Diesel wet dream on kerosene.

The Tales of Harsh Gruder is a short film project that has been cooking in the creative oven for years now, and here we are now entering post-production as we shot principal photography on June 24, 25, and 26. If movies could be made from only loving intent – we’d have an enormous budget to work with. As it happens, you need money to make films, and this one is no different – this is why we’re reaching out for financial support.

It was immensely easy to have fun with Rob, he knew SO MANY people, and his smile was other-worldly, if you ever met him out in public you’d never have him all to yourself for very long. I was truly blessed to have Rob as a close friend for nearly 40 years, I miss him every day, as I’m sure many people do. The Tales of Harsh Gruder is my attempt to bring some full-on Rob spirit back to the world, one last absurd adventure together.

This film is for all the people who’ve lost someone to suicide, a celebration of the finite amount of time we have together – to help us to stop asking why… but instead, as survivors, to ask of life itself: why not?

With the Tribes Project as our 501c3 fiscal sponsor, any contributions will be tax deductible.

Logline:

A recovering addict contemplates the point of living, when an unexpected visit by his life-long buddy sets in motion a night of psychedelic absurdity and devastating revelation.

Synopsis:

Jonathan has a gun and a lot of bullets, and he is clearly contemplating using them – when a surprise knock on the door by his life-long friend Jason disrupts the moment. So, begins a night where two friends reminisce and relive many of their crazy moments together – connecting as only two people who’ve known each other nearly forever do. In the midst of it all, they play their version of exquisite corpse and take some questionable substances. The night careens along into realms of the weird and ridiculous, ending with an outdoor adventure that brings the story to an unavoidable, emotional close.