Raging Midlife

Director's Statement

“Reach for the stars and knock you opponent far, send him to planet Pluto to look down at mars! Now THAT’S an emancipation proclamation, yeah!” --Raging Abraham Lincoln Buy the ticket, take the ride. RAGING MIDLIFE is a comedy about love, loss, hope, grief and the end of nostalgia. We think stories are better with layers. I wrote Raging Midlife with my best friend Nic Costa in 2003. It has taken us more than twenty years to get this film from page to screen. Many thanks go to our late friend and Portland original Jeffrey Wonderful (aka Jeffrey Wilson) who would NOT let us quit on this film and this city. Because of Jeffrey, “Keep Portland Weird” became “Keep Portland Wonderful.” And for a time, Portland was wonderful. Jeffery was our captain - he started roller derby in Portland, produced rock operas in dive bars, appeared in his underpants in Dandy Warhol videos, and handed stickers to old ladies reading “My other boyfriend is Jeffrey Wonderful” just to make them smile and breathed life into our rain-soaked city. And then Jeffrey started “Portland Organic Wrestling.” A silly community-oriented grudge match in PDX pound town that was more theater/vaudeville than wrestling but got us thinking about pro wrestling in a different way as people from all walks of life participated in the tomfoolery. We quickly learned that wrestling brought the people together. It bridged all the divides: There’s art, there’s pageantry, there’s honky-tonk beer drinking and it’s fun. Really fun. We saw ultra-liberal PDX punks toasting to dyed-in-the-wool conservative cowboys. It worked. Jeffrey built a community out of estranged bedfellows that learned they shared more in common than they ever realized. It was good for the city. Before he died, Jeffrey came to me and asked to direct Raging Midlife: “wrestling and theater are fleeting, Rob, but movies are forever.” I agreed. And we hit the ground running, planning and devising how we were going make this BEHEMOTH script for the peanuts we were making at our local bars and coffee shops. Sadly, before Jeffrey could take the helm, his motorcycle crashed into a freeway barrier. The community he built was shattered and some say old Portland died with him that day but I believe it charged us with carrying on his legacy to bring this struggling city back in our way. And so we try with Raging Midlife. The film is a love letter to Jeffrey's exuberance, wild sense of humor, and the city we are trying to rebuild in his Wonderful name. I am thrilled to share the laughter and tears of this 20+ year odyssey with you. The film is a John Hughes-style romp that yearns to make you smile. For us, the entire ride has been an adventure all its own. Through its making, Raging Midlife managed to help an Afghan family out of harm’s way, filmed through massive Portland protests, was shut down numerous times due to a global pandemic, and remained un-singed from the worst Oregon wildfires in living memory. Most importantly, we managed to breathe life back into a struggling city with the help of a pop icon, a comic icon, a Star Trek icon and bunch of crazy Portland artists I’ve had the privilege of working with for the past 25 years thanks to Jeffrey. At the very least, we hope Raging Midlife sheds some much needed light after so much divisive dark in Portland and elsewhere. At the very most, we hope you cry laughing at this little romp of ours. Rob Taylor (and Nic Costa)