We set out to tell a personal story. Something that gets at the heady mix of joy and fear that defines parenthood. Something that is true to the mysterious, desolate, and surpassingly beautiful place that is the Big Bend region of West Texas.

My producer, Aaron, has a house and some land near the ghost town of Terlingua; he and his family spend as much time as they can out there. This movie began to take root when my family spent a week with his, exploring the desert, having adventures, and nearly getting ourselves in trouble.

The things we think about when we think about our families, when we worry about them, loom larger in the isolation of the desert, where the phones don’t work, where animals prowl, where strangers are strange, where help might be hours away. From the everydayness of those dangers sprang the Price and Talbott families, on their own strange trip through the wilds of Big Bend.

There’s a monster stalking these families, and the monster is ordinary life.

Brett Wagner
Writer/Director