The Story of Mothers and Daughters began as a twinkle … an idea.

A hope.

A desire.

An aspiration…

… to tell a profoundly human story, a universal story, that focused on women’s experience.

… to reveal a primary, essential, core human relationship

… and to do it in a way that had never been done before.

We made a promise to ourselves:  to do in depth research interviews with at least 400 women and girls* so that the story would be honest, representative, diverse, inclusive… and kick-ass powerful and entertaining.

At the time we called it “Hard Labor: the story of mothers and daughters”

 (glad we changed the title? i am, hahaha.)

100 interviews and 1000 phone calls later, a Vice President at Kodak told us they were potentially interested in sponsoring the documentary, Did we have a pitch reel? 

(Actually, this was so long ago that what she literally said was, “Did we have a slide show?”)

Sure, we said.

Except we didn’t.

Fortunately we did have Harper Collins, the publishing house, as a partner.  They planned to publish a Mother-Daughter photo book to accompany the future TV broadcast.  They had a photo library.  Available immediately. (an important thing in the pre internet era.)

The next day, Gary selected 500 hopefully appropriate images and literally worked around the clock for most of next 3 days and …it was done, just in time. We sent it off to Kodak.  At their key decision makers meeting, they played it.  We attended by phone,  listening as the video played, and then it ended.

Silence.

Silence for the LONGEST time.

We said nothing.

We held our breath.

We waited.

Eventually, we started to hear  some discreet sniffling sounds.

Then came the Vice President’s voice.  She said,  “Excuse us while we collect ourselves. I had to go to the next room and bring back some tissues.  There isn’t a dry eye in the room here.”

Later, our ally the Vice President explained that she had been serving on this committee for over 10 years.  Without a doubt,  she said, she had seen over 10,000 slide shows and pitch reels. She said this was the best one she had ever seen.

 Kodak became our first sponsor and first money in …

…on our million dollar journey to making a truly pro-woman, truly diverse, and truly authentic non-celebrity-based network documentary.