BEFORE I DO
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a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization (EIN: 88-3840078)
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GARY JAFFE | Writer / Director (he/him)
Originally from Austin TX, Gary is a Brooklyn-based award-winning writer/ director of film and theatre. He was a 2020 Outfest Screenwriting Lab Fellow for his feature screenplay OUR LAST SUMMER, which was also selected for Film Independent FastTrack 2021, Gotham/IFP Week 2020, and Inside Out Film Finance Forum 2020. His three short films SUNSET (2017), NEXT LEVEL SHIT (2019), and LAST SUMMER WITH UNCLE IRA (2020) have all had award-winning international festival runs -- including premieres at the Palm Springs International Shortfest, the Rhode Island International Film Festival and Outfest. His most recent short film 5 PLAYER GAME (2025) is about to hit the festival circuit! Gary is also working with director/producer Justine Raczkiewicz on MUSIC OF CHANGES, a film about queer experimental composer John Cage. His theatre work has appeared on stages around the country, including his plays DIASPORA TX and SONG TO THE MOON and the musical AT FIRST SIGHT. In Austin, he received the B. Iden Payne Award for Outstanding Director of a Comedy and the Austin Critics’ Table Award for Best Drama. Gary received his BA in Theatre from Yale University. In all Gary’s work, he makes space for a more complex and nuanced understanding of modern queer life, queer love, queer dreams, and queer self-acceptance.
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Project Type: Feature Film
Status: Post-Production
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Production Country: USA
Production Companies: Monarch Kaleidoscope & Two Canz Films
Writer/Director: Gary Jaffe
Producers: Emily McCann Lesser, Tom Wallis
Executive Producer: Joe Pirro, Henry Russell Bergstein, Andy Tobias, Alex Bilbao, & Frank Glaser
Language: English
Logline: A lakeside bachelorette weekend devolves into gay chaos when the groom and the best man’s past romantic feelings reignite, entangling the wedding party—their college BFFs and the groom’s not-so-straight best friend—in the pre-wedding drama.
Project Status: Post production. We're picture locking soon and are in need of funds to pay our stellar editor Justin Chan and for the rest of post production costs, which are estimated at $50k.
EMILY MCCANN LESSER | Producer (she/her)
Emily McCann Lesser is a producer born, raised, and based in NYC. Her work has premiered at Sundance, SXSW, and TriBeCa, and been distributed by Netflix, HBO, IFC Films, and more. Projects in development at her company Monarch Kaleidoscope have received support from the Sundance Institute, Film Independent, The Gotham, and Cinereach. She produced the SXSW 2025 audience award winning feature film FANTASY LIFE that will be released later this year by Greenwich Entertainment, and her latest collaboration with Charlie Kaufman—his short film HOW TO SHOOT A GHOST starring Jessie Buckley and lensed by Golden Frog winner Michal Dymek—recently world premiered at Venice 2025. Emily's previous work includes FAREWELL AMOR (Sundance 2020 Producers Award), RULE OF TWO WALLS (Tribeca 2023 Special Jury Prize for Human Rights and Artistic Expression), and the first season of the HBO variety show RANDOM ACTS OF FLYNESS (2018 Peabody Award). Emily’s mission is to create work with heart that sparks meaningful conversations about our shared humanity and offers strong market appeal. With a focus on storytelling that transcends borders, she is committed to producing work that engages, challenges, and inspires audiences worldwide, told by diverse writers and directors who bring unique visions and a passion for telling powerful, entertaining, and deeply personal stories.
TOM WALLIS | Producer (he/him)
Tom Wallis started his producing career in broadcast news where he found himself as an assistant line producer on Australia’s #1 breakfast show SUNRISE before moving to NYC. After finding his feet in the city and working in production, he launched his own company BAD ON PAPER PRODUCTIONS with partner Sarah Mather of Pinky Promise Films. Their first feature CORPUS (Dir. Corrin Evans) is an indie horror in production in New York (where he met the fabulous Emily McCann Lesser!). Tom holds a BA and a Masters degree in Creative Writing from Macquarie University and is about to finish a Masters in Screen Business at the Australian Film Television & Radio School. His MO (and company mandate) is to create commercially viable queer films across all genres, making the films and representation he wishes he could’ve seen growing up in the suburbs of Sydney. His recent credits include: HOWL (Berlinale 2025 & Melbourne International FF 2025); INFINIT3 (Melbourne International FF 2025); WILD DOG (SXSW Sydney 2025); and TAPPED (Mardi Gras Film Festival 2024).
JOE PIRRO | Executive Producer (he/him)
Joe Pirro produced Andrew Ahn’s THE WEDDING BANQUET starring Bowen Yang and Lily Gladstone which premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival where he won the Sundance Institute - Amazon MGM Studios Producers Award for Fiction. The film was released theatrically in April in the U.S. by Bleecker Street. His other recent credits include Ahn’s DRIVEWAYS (Berlin ’19), Mike Ott’s MCVEIGH (Tribeca ’24), and Minhal Baig’s WE GROWN NOW (Toronto, ’23) which was released in 2024 by Sony Pictures Classics and was nominated for three Film Independent Spirit Awards including Best Feature. Other credits include Kitty Green’s CASTING JONBENET and THE ASSISTANT, Amman Abbasi’s DAYVEON, Rhys Ernst’s ADAM, and Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s A PRAYER BEFORE DAWN which premiered at Cannes in 2017.
Key Cast: Cole Doman, Michael Hsu Rosen, Robin de Jesus, Nico Greetham, and Jared Reinfeldt
Director’s Statement:
In early 2018, I was planning a wedding to a man I believed was the love of my life. In September, I called it off. To do so, I had to tear down the fantasy narrative I’d built around our love to protect myself from facing the terrible reality of our daily lives. (He was an alcoholic/addict, I was his enabler, same old story.) But I loved him so much, until I didn’t. Or couldn’t.
Love is funny like that. You can feel it so strongly, but it is just a feeling. Feelings can change, or be deceptive, or be subject to circumstance. You can get married and enshrine your love with certain legal rights, but that doesn’t prove anything. And yet, we do make those big choices on account of love— move in, get married, live our lives together.
How do we know love is real enough to take action—to change our lives for? That question is at the heart of BEFORE I DO.
Alex and John Michael were college boyfriends who are now best friends. They get engaged at the exact same time, but both eventually find their relationships challenging. With John Michael’s help, Alex escapes his toxic abusive alcoholic fiancé. John Michael, meanwhile, finds himself in a malaise despite his future husband’s stability. Given their romantic history, their friendship, and their emotional needs, it’s no surprise that John Michael and Alex feel their romance rekindling at John Michael’s bachelorette weekend.
But what should they do about it? BEFORE I DO offers no easy answers. My priority is to make space for the incredible intensity of love and sexual attraction, as well as the complications that come with. I want the characters to squirm under the dual reality and unreality of love. I want them to learn more deeply about themselves because of that experience.
And, to tip my hand just a little, whatever they choose to do, I don’t want them to regret it. I don’t regret the time I spent with my ex, even as I see where it was misguided. I know myself better now. I love others with clearer eyes; I love myself more.
To shorten a famous phrase, “Tis better to have loved.” Period.
~ Gary Jaffe, Director, BEFORE I DO