By Will Tentindo
Amazing Grace is a semi-autobiographical series from filmmaker Julie Money that stars her daughter Grace as a young girl navigating life with her deceased father by her side. In 2013, Money’s husband, Australian actor and screenwriter Jeff Truman, died suddenly from a bleed in his brain stem.
“Our lives were turned upside down,” Money said, “Grace and I grew even closer. We would share stories about Jeff, talk about what he would do, how he would handle a situation, what he would make of us in the kitchen pathetically trying to cook food that he managed to make so effortlessly? We missed everything about him. Neither of us were equipped for this new life so we made it up as best we could. Often crying, always hugging and trying to deal with how people were treating us, as if we were a bit broken, because we were.”
Money and her daughter later had the idea to create a web series about a young girl whose father has also died, and the way that she channels him to guide her through life’s obstacles. Amazing Grace also stars Ben Wood as Grace’s late father and Justine Clarke as Grace’s Mom. Money considers her daughter to be a collaborator on the web series.
“We work on scripts together. She’ll edit with me… I’m conscious of the fact that she’s behind it; that later on she won’t say, ‘I can’t believe you made me do this.’ She’s very proud of it.
“It was important the series captured Jeff’s wit, warmth and wisdom,” Money said. “With his writing, his main goal was to connect with the audience, to make them feel something. To laugh and to cry. That had to be the tone for the series.”
The five-episode premiere series, available here, was also the result of a successful crowdfunding campaign and currently has close to a 5,000-person viewership. It also recently won an Excellence Award for Web Series at IndieFest in San Diego.
The second series’ fundraising campaign, on the online platform Pozible, raised over $6,000, successfully funding two episodes, with the rest of the money going towards improving the quality of the web series.
“I learned a lot from the first one, and I thought it was either going to go one way or another. It was going to go really well or tank… You really need to reach two-thirds of your target in the first 48 hours. With crowdfunding, you have to work really hard.”
With filming set to begin on the next two episodes soon, Money is thinking about her next steps. She compared the future of the series to Boyhood, saying that she sees a potential future of amazing Grace episodes checking in on Grace at different stages in her life as she learns to overcome certain obstacles.
First, she’s waiting to hear back from film festivals. Amazing Grace has been accepted at festivals in Milan, Italy and Miami in the United States. It was also a finalist for Best Australian Drama and Best Supporting Actor for Ben Wood at the recent Melbourne Web Fest.
