By: Elizabeth Galewski
Emmy award-winning writer, director, and “cat-repreneur” Cris Graves is on a mission to bring a groundbreaking story to the big screen — an (un)romantic comedy called “Alone Girl” about the joys of being single. But that’s not all. Graves has also built a revolutionary approach to fundraising, paving the way for the innovative films of the future.
“Alone Girl”: Graves’s Thought-provoking (Un)romantic Comedy
Now a happily single woman in her 50s, Graves used key moments from her own life to write “Alone Girl.” “My protagonist is based on me,” she explains. “She’s in her late 40s/early 50s. She is single, happy, and loves it. More women need to see that kind of role model.”
Conflict provides the fuel for any good story, and “Alone Girl” is no exception. Yet, in this anti-romcom, the conflict comes from an unexpected source. “Over the course of the film, the heroine’s friends and family keep pressuring her to get into a relationship,” Graves says. “They might be very well-meaning, but they are actually promoting a damaging, toxic belief that only those in relationships with others are worthy members of society. They’ve bought into the idea we’re all conditioned to believe: if you’re a woman, your happiness comes from an external place; that it’s given to you by a partner who has chosen you. You would think this is the conflict, but the real journey is for the protagonist to realize she was happy on her own all along and that there is nothing wrong with her if she chooses to remain single because she learns that is her happy place.”
Throughout the movie, the heroine realizes there’s nothing wrong with her, and her happiness rightly comes from inside. “Being single can be a joyful choice,” Graves says. “That’s what this film is about. Because despite what Valentine’s Day would have you believe, romantic love is not the highest form of love. The reality is that love and romance can come in so many ways and that being alone is not, in fact, interchangeable with loneliness as we’re so often taught by society. It’s like we’ve been gaslit by the patriarchy into this belief that we don’t own our own happiness. We do, and once we take ownership of our own happiness and generate it from within, we can step into our true selves and show up in the world and our relationships with others in a healthier and brighter way.”
Graves has found this central message lands powerfully with a number of diverse audiences.
A Story For Everyone Who Needs to Escape Their Conditioning
“In the process of holding readings, I’ve found that ‘Alone Girl’ resonates not only with many women but also with other people who have needed to distance themselves from common but unhelpful social messages like trans, nonbinary, and asexual people or really anyone in the LGBTQIA+ community,” Graves says. “There’s a big market.”
For example, a 19-year-old trans man once told Graves that, as he was reading the script, he wondered why he resonated with a woman in her 40s so much, only to realize that he had also been getting the same message growing up. That’s why he loved reading it.
Graves wrote the screenplay as a comedy for strategic purposes. “Comedy is a great delivery system,” she explains. “You get people laughing, and then they think, ‘Oh, hey, wait — that makes sense.’”
In this way, “Alone Girl” entertains even as it moves our culture’s needle closer to inclusivity for people of all kinds — even those who prefer a single life. In the process, it also opens up a new option for people to shape their futures in ways that will serve them best.
“Alone Girl” placed in three categories of the semi-final round of the 2019 Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition and the top 10% of the 2020 Nicholl Fellowship. It also got Graves on the Austin Film Festival’s 25 Screenwriters to Watch List in 2020.
Despite these prestigious accolades, however, obtaining the necessary funds to make the movie has proven challenging.
Going Alone to Make “Alone Girl”
Graves tried the conventional way of securing financing in Hollywood multiple times. “I’ve tried the ‘right’ way,” she says. “I’ve had development funds offered only to fall through four times.”
She gradually realized that the traditional Hollywood financing system would prevent her from having the artistic oversight she needed over “Alone Girl” anyway.
“It’s my story, and I need to be in charge of it,” Graves says. “In many ways, I’m the brand. I used to be an introvert who would cut myself out of the conversation. But the most interesting part of my journey has been that by writing ‘Alone Girl’ and creating my lead character, Sam, who is very much based on me, I somehow wound up manifesting the version of myself today. Now, I’m comfortable hearing my own voice. I’m bolder and lead with my passion, and I feel it in my bones that I will get ‘Alone Girl’ made.”
To find a way to pay for the film while maintaining control, she has turned her creativity in a new direction: developing a whole new financing method.
Creative Crowdfunding For “Alone Girl”
Graves has launched several initiatives to crowdfund “Alone Girl.” The first is a line of merchandise called Pawsman Prints, which sells everything from T-shirts and sweatshirts to stationery with charming visuals of Graves’s adorable cats.
“I offer a collection of whimsical cat-themed products,” Graves explains. “My cats Jack, Bobby, and Chadwick Pawsman started the company. They wanted to help their mom raise funds for the film because they believed in the mission, and they also wanted to see more representations of cats in the film. Why should dogs get all the fun?”
Graves’s first goal with Pawsman Prints is to raise $100,000. “That will give me some funds to put down for letters of intent and secure talent,” Graves says. In filmmaking, actors issue letters of intent for projects in which they intend to participate.
The main character of “Alone Girl” will also wear one of the Pawsman Prints sweatshirts in the movie. “I’ve never heard of anyone doing that before,” Graves observes. “Not only will the proceeds from the merch raise funds for the film, but the merch will also be featured in the film itself. It’s a new way of fundraising outside of the traditional Hollywood system.”
Graves also hosts a podcast called “Blissful Spinster,” which explores the happy single life and Graves’s journey in making Alone Girl. “I want to reclaim the word spinster,” she says, explaining the title. “Traditionally, it meant older women who spun wool. That’s a creative act, so how did that become a negative? I gladly call myself a spinster. I’m a creative spinner — an artist of my own happiness.”
Everyone Is Worthy
For Graves, success is reaching even one or two more people with her ideas and helping them feel seen.\
“My dream would be for ‘Alone Girl’ to strike a chord in the zeitgeist and become a film where women of all ages, and really anyone who has felt boxed in by patriarchy with a big “P” can come to and feel seen, feel heard. Because the reality is everyone is worthy,” Graves says. “Everyone should be able to feel like they belong because we all have stories to tell, and those stories make up the beautiful fabric we call humankind. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a relationship or not, or love this person or that person, or wear this odd hat or that outlandish make-up. Whatever your beautiful weirdness is, you should feel like it’s okay to express it, and you shouldn’t be made to feel like there is something intrinsically wrong with you because there is nothing wrong with you. But that’s just it; for so long, we’ve only heard from the same voices, and I want to be a part of the change that is slowly — too slowly happening. Because if some voices are valued as more, the patchwork becomes less colorful and less vibrant, and why would anyone want that?”
Published by: Holy Minoza
