Based on a short story by Linda K. Wright, this brief and telling study of violence and emotional dysfunction in American families follows an elderly pair of parents as they wait for their son, who has escaped from an unspecified institution, to return home. This film features my parents. American Gothic was shot in my living room in 1995 and then shelved due to lack of money for a 16mm film print. When my mother died in the spring of 2009, I thought about how she had always been supportive of my film career, remembered this footage, and re-edited it digitally. My father also did not live to see this film.
