Writer/Director Mark Gordon Talks About "Her Majesty"

This seems like it would be one of the hardest types of films to sell – an indie family film. Yes. It’s like an independently, ‘foreign’ family film, which is almost never made. Family films generally are either Disney or Pixar or DreamWorks, and until we were doing it there were very few independently made family appealing films. Ours does play to a really wide audience. We’ve had audiences where there’s no kids, where it’s all seniors, and women, and singles, and it plays great. Then we’ve had audiences where you’ve got kids 6 -12 and it plays great. But yet the perception is when you’re with the acquisition side, you’re looking at this going, “Where does this fit with what we do?” Personally a lot of the acquisitions people for a long time were young, single people and it wasn’t there thing. Now of course everyone started kids and then suddenly it became more acceptable. It’s still tough. Generally the independent films, they are acquiring them for personal taste – edgy, sexy, violent, whatever. I think that made it more difficult. It’s been an interesting journey. What does Her Majesty mean to you or mean to audiences? Hopefully it is something that will stay with people and both be entertaining and enlightening. What it means to me is that I guess that it shows that if you believe in something and you stick to it, you can achieve something. It shows me the value of persistence, passion, of not giving up. And to audiences I just hope that they enjoy the movie, that it’s entertaining, and that if they like it it will be something that they tell friends about and spread the word. It’s been a labor of love and it’s one of these things that will succeed or fail based on whether people feel strongly enough to recommend it to friends. San Diego is our first really big market where we have a chance to make an impact. I guess my hope is that it’s something that people will remember, like wonderful films that I saw when I was a kid that you still remember. But also when I first decided to write this, I was just getting into watching independent films and I just remember coming out of those films and feeling like I’d discovered something. I hope people when they come out of it they feel like they’ve discovered something.