How to Tie a Tie

Some stories don’t begin, they wait…
They wait for the silence to get loud enough. For the can of Coke to sweat in your palm. For the man who helped create you to sit across from you at a pizza shop and ask not how you are, but how much money your movie has made so far. And if your mother still looks good.

My biological father didn’t raise me. But he showed up once.

After I made a $300 movie that went viral. After talent agents called. After strangers cared. He showed up in that pizza shop asking about my mom and the movie – not like a man remembering love, but like someone remembering an old house that he thinks he might own.

He didn’t call me looking for a son. He called for an opportunity.

That moment didn’t break me. “How to Tie a Tie” was born from that fracture. But it’s not about him. It’s about what comes next. It’s about the person who chooses to stay.

Dominique, the boy in the film, is soft. Quiet. Queer. Trying to fit into a suit that doesn’t quite hold him yet. He’s hurt by the man who made him, but reluctantly healed by the man who didn’t – the man who shows up, flips pancakes, and says, “You look important.”

The story isn’t loud. It’s not about revenge or spectacle. It’s about presence. And the quiet, radical act of someone being there without making you earn it.

This movie was the first time I turned the camera toward the wound. No high-concept. No mind-bending twist. Just the truth. Just a story where the most heroic thing a man can do is not teach a boy to be tough, but teach him how to love himself enough to look in the mirror and stay.

I used to think coming-of-age meant finding who you are.
Now I think it means forgiving who you weren’t allowed to be.

“How to Tie a Tie” is my apology to myself. It’s my way of saying: You were always enough. Even before the tie was tied. Even before the mirror was fixed.

We premiered the film locally before it went out to festivals. A teenage boy waited until the room was almost empty before approaching me. He just said “thank you,” with a look that said much more. His mother stood behind him, hands on his shoulders like a brace.

That’s why I made it.

Not to show the world who I am. But to remind someone else they’re not alone. That even without a father, without permission, without a map – you can still arrive. You can still tie the knot. You can still look in the mirror and say: “I’m enough.”

Because the best stories aren’t about how the hero got their wound, but about how the hero decided to heal it.