Fade in on…
New York City, 1997. The Brady siblings are fresh out of college with bright light, big city dreams of raising the money to make their first feature film. But financing is tight, even in the city’s indie film salad days when upstart studios like Miramax, Gramercy Pictures, and Artisan Entertainment are releasing buzzy films made by a new generation of filmmakers.
The sisters ultimately decide that the best—and cheapest—way to attract funding is to shoot a two-to-three-minute trailer for their yet-to-be-made feature. But neither Evelyn nor Monica have any connections at the companies that produce and cut trailers. So they take the only logical next step: Creating an awards show that will bring those companies to them.
“Evelyn said, ‘Let’s start sending out awards applications, and that’s how we’ll find trailer editors,’” Monica Brady remembers, shaking her head at their youthful naivete. “When you say it now, it seems weird! But when you’ve just graduated from school, it makes sense.”
Against the odds, their weird gambit worked. Major trailer houses eagerly submitted their work to 1999’s inaugural Golden Trailer Awards, with the list reading like a who’s who of that seismic year in film. Besides The Matrix, statues went to the trailers for The Blair Witch Project, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, and Out of Sight, while Run Lola Run, Face/Off, and Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace were among the nominees.
The inclusion of the latter film had a special resonance for the Bradys as the original Star Wars laid the cornerstone for their film careers.
“Star Wars totally blew my mind and forever changed my life,” Monica Brady says, noting that The Matrix did the same thing for audiences—and trailer makers—in 1999. “Phil Daccord cut the first Matrix trailer, and it was revolutionary.”
After that first awards show, the Brady sisters had no shortage of contacts in the trailer world. But rather than follow through on their plans of finding an editor for their own project, the Bradys decided that they appreciated the previews even more than the feature presentation. To this day, their script remains unfilmed.
“We’d still like to shoot that movie, by the way,” Evelyn Brady says, chuckling.
