aka The Auteur Tribe
The Story
The Story of Natasha & Sam:
Natasha & Sam is a fictionalized story based on an earlier chapter in my life.
I made two short films about this experience:
My 2005 film, Lost Almost, and my 2020 film, Natasha & Sam.
A feature screenplay for Natasha & Sam also exists…
In real life, as in the films, I landed a 6-month dance contract, working and living alongside two British women, that took us to Japan in the mid 90s, where we also had to work as Hostesses in the two clubs we danced in.
I had managed to talk my way into this contract without auditioning, as the company was based in England, and I lined up the gig via a friend I waited tables with. However, after it was set up, but before I set out, I ended up falling in love with a man I call “Bill.” Unable to cancel the contract without paying high penalties, I trusted we would still be in love six-months later and set off, hoping the contract would bring me somewhere like Portugal, where he could perhaps visit. During the rehearsals in Northern England we learned it would be Japan where they would be sending us, and that there would only be three of us, as another dancer had cancelled.
The two Brits, whom I call Samantha and Brittney, were immediately bonded because of their shared background, and because Brittney was very young and not inclined to do things on her own. Right away I was attracted to Samantha, but didn’t imagine it to be mutual, and of course, there was the boyfriend back home... though we’d agreed we wouldn’t ask each other to be monogamous in this time away, so soon after we began dating. As in the film, a couple weeks in, I began an affair with Samantha, and then found myself falling in love with her, which was also my first love affair with a woman, and so it was for her too.
Now Brittney found herself as the odd girl out, to which she was not happy about. And because we were all strangers in a strange land, the need to take care of each other, despite annoyances, weighed strong. As the end of the contract loomed near, in real life as in the film, the risk for (me) Natasha, to lose both lovers, seemed highly likely.
The feature film ends shortly after the girls depart in London, following the end of the contract. Natasha has boarded a plane back to the US where she will see her boyfriend again. Samantha will briefly be home in England and then take another contract somewhere, as is her pattern. Natasha worries if she will ever see Samantha again, but she knows she cannot do any more contracts- even if they are not as dreadful as the Japan one was, and that the chance of getting hired on the same contracts as Samantha would be nearly impossible.
(My) boyfriend was very jealous, and this relationship took another three years to play out before we finally broke up for good, to be followed by my coming out as gay. It had taken about six months, post-contract, before the real-life Samantha cut off from this drama… several years later we were sporadically in touch, with me sending letters to Samantha’s home base in England (aka her parent’s home.) It was also at this time that I began film studies, in large part because I had this story I wanted to tell and it had finally occurred to me that perhaps I could be the one to tell it, in the role of director.
In early 2005, as I was about to travel to Australia where I would do graduate film studies (via an around-the-world plane ticket with a stop off in England) I contacted Samantha to see if I could visit on the way. I could not, and then she mysteriously disappeared soon after this ask. Across 2006-2020 I wrote the feature screenplay and then made a short version, which was also my graduate-thesis film (Natasha & Sam.)
In November 2024, the real-life Samantha reached back out to me, after 19 years of estrangement and my not knowing how to contact her. I learned we are both widows, and that it was her late husband who had felt threatened by me (just as my earlier boyfriend had of her) and made her choose and essentially cut me out of her life. Now, in 2025, we are planning to see each other- for the first time in 28 years. She again lives in Northern England, now with her son, and I now live again in Northern California, as I had when we last spoke in 2005… She has recently watched both films I’ve made about us- and fortunately liked them!
