SAN ANTONIO — 'Stitched' is not Zach Goodwin's first swing at directing, writing, or producing. As a graduate of Marshall High School, it's not his first project shot in San Antonio. It is his first feature film.
"I've been working on the script for about three and a half years," Goodwin said. "Honestly, story-wise, I've been working on it, I would say, my whole life."
The 21-year-old filmmaker says the movie is about Ted, the grandfather who wakes up in the afterlife able to watch all of the conversations held behind his back when he was alive.
"I wanted to take that concept of exploring someone's life, the perspective of gossip," he said. "Then combine it with like a very personal element about family and growing up and seeing relationships change over the years."
Goodwin says he used his family to make the script come to life; in particular, he used his mother and grandmother.
"I'm a child of divorced parents, and, you know, being honest, it was kind of nasty for quite a few years," he said.
The young filmmaker based a character on his father too. Admittedly, the two had a strained relationship.
"So he went to prison for a few years when I was younger," Goodwin said. "Most of my life, I saw him as a criminal."
His father is out of prison, and they have healed their relationship. In fact, his dad is helping with the movie, as are other family members.
Goodwin says no character in the upcoming independent film is solely any member of his family. He is using some of their reality to give the film emotional muscle.
"It is very influenced by what happened in my real life, but I also played it up in certain different ways," he said.
Goodwin was home-schooled and trying his hand at acting before enrolling at Marshall High School. After taking an editing class, he said it changed his life.
Goodwin won the Fan's Choice Award for Best Texas High School Short Film at the South by Southwest Film Festival in 2019.
He credits his Uncle Harry and horror movie night for getting him interested in movies.
"It's almost unexplainable. It is this voice inside me that I hear every single morning," he said. "And that speaks to me when I see other art and when I see other movies."
Goodwin, Alexander Flanagan, Flynn Harris, Fernan Rottman, Fenglin Lu, Callie McCullouch, Nicholas Luna, and Reena Vela are working with him on the team. Luna is also from San Antonio.
Ninety-one backers have pledged over $73,000 for them to begin production this summer via Kickstarter.
The money follows a creative social media campaign where crew members got tattoos for financial pledges and wrote the names of investors on their vehicles. Goodwin even walked around Hollywood, allowing people to sign on him to get the film mad.