Director’s Statement

“The Barnes Family Legend goes something like this:

In 1834, the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith taught my great-great-great-great-grandmother Polly Hyde his new American religion in upstate New York. At the close of his lesson, Polly rebuked him by exclaiming: “Joseph! If what you say is false, then hell is too good of a place for you.” To which Joseph replied, “you’re right. Hell would be too good of a place. But it is true, I know it to be.”  Polly was baptized and, a hundred  and sixty four years  later, so was I. 

Growing up in the church, Mormonism felt like too good of a place for me. My whole life, the prophet of the church - Gordon B. Hinkley - warned us via satellite broadcast to avoid “pornography like it was a plague.” Like the main character in my film, Elder Hyde, I was taught to believe the truth of such hellfire talk. I convinced myself that I was an addict - a plague-ridden sinner. Only confession  to God’s representative could rid myself of the shame. But, unlike Elder Hyde, my Dad was the Bishop so I never confessed.

I was raised in a community with rigid standards of masculinity and intense pressure to conform. I struggled with belief but wanted to belong, so I served my Mormon mission  to Salta, Argentina  at the age of 19.  These experiences of religious paradox have informed my perspective as a storyteller, focusing on  personal alienation and nuanced, intimate codes (both sexual and social) within our own troubled communities.”

— Gregory Barnes