About Monica
Monica Brady is a trailblazing force in the film and tech industries, celebrated and respected by esteemed media outlets such as Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Time, and The Wall Street Journal. Her remarkable journey in the entertainment world has been shaped by an unwavering dedication to education, invaluable mentorship, and a relentless work ethic.
Monica’s academic prowess laid the foundation for her success, studying at Oxford and graduating from NYU’s renowned Tisch School of Film and Television Production. Early in her career, she earned her stripes at the iconic Jim Henson Production’s tv show “City Kids”, an experience that left an indelible mark on her creative vision as well as teaching her about creative collaboration and how to drive a cube truck through the mean streets of Manhattan.
From there, Monica delved into the heart of filmmaking, gaining hands-on experience on the set of Larry Clark’s controversial film “Kids,” further shaping her understanding of storytelling and filmmaking techniques.
One of her earliest achievements was the outstanding success of her short film, “The Forgotten,” shot entirely in the Republic of Ireland. This remarkable piece earned her the top prize for screenwriting at the Austin Film Festival and won Worldfest’s prestigious award for the best short film. Her talent for adaptation was showcased in her screenplay for Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” which garnered accolades and recognition within the industry.
Monica’s outstanding reputation didn’t go unnoticed, and soon advertising agencies sought her expertise, leading to work in commercial production. She brought her creative vision and leadership to prominent agencies such as Ogilvy, Lowe, Leo Burnett, TBWA\Chiat\Day, BBDO, SapientNitro, and Mirrorball. Her involvement in multi-million dollar events, like Dos Equis’ “Most Interesting Show in the World” Tour and The Most Interesting Academy, as well as Amstel Light’s Ryder Cup and Sundance Consumer Engagement, set the standard for successful campaigns in the industry.
Monica’s role as co-founder of The Golden Trailer Awards (GTA) in 1999 has solidified her impact on the industry. The GTA has become synonymous with recognizing excellence in motion picture trailers, earning the nickname “the Oscars for the short attention span” from The Wall Street Journal. Her expertise in this field has garnered interviews with media outlets from around the globe.
Not content to rest on her laurels, Monica decided to take on the director’s chair, successfully shooting her feature film directorial debut, “Above All Things,” in 2017. Her exceptional talent didn’t go unnoticed, as she was recognized as one of the New Directors to watch in the annual Shoot Magazine’s “New Directors” Showcase Event 2017. Undeterred, she is currently immersed in the production of her second feature film, “Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald,” based on the book by Ron Carlson.
Monica’s visionary drive led her to revolutionize the distribution model within the entertainment industry, resulting in the co-founding of the groundbreaking tech startup, VUniverse. With a core mission of democratizing distribution, Monica aimed to empower a wider audience by making content access more inclusive. VUniverse emerges as the ingenious solution to the overwhelming content landscape presented by various streaming providers. The application, available on app stores and as a web-based platform, serves as an essential tool. It offers impartial and ad-free guidance, effectively navigating users through the maze of entertainment options. By harnessing the power of AI, VU delivers precision recommendations, catering to subscribers who prioritize both privacy and time efficiency.
Monica Brady’s remarkable journey seamlessly fuses her deep-rooted passion for storytelling with her indomitable spirit within the film/entertainment and tech sectors. Her exceptional accomplishments bear testament to her unrivaled talents and enduring contributions to the realm of entertainment and tech.
Director’s Statement About Above All Things
Above All Things was inspired by a trip out to a lake house in Putnam County, New York. The day after the visit, I felt compelled to sit at my computer, open up Final Draft and just start writing. As the great writer and champion of artists everywhere, Steven Pressfield says, ideas for our stories come from something outside of ourselves and we are merely the vehicle through which the body of work, be it a novel or a screenplay, comes forth and this is the case with this film.
Above All Things started out more as a horror story. From there, I started focusing on things that scare us in the daytime. I discovered it is not so much scary things as it is just being alone with our thoughts that scares us the most, so the story grew from there. This helped me conceptualize Bobby Larson, an everyday/everyman type of guy who retreated to the woods in order to heal from the recent death of his wife. This dramatic feature encompasses elements of the supernatural genre, the comedy genre, the buddy movie genre, and the horror genre to tell the story. I believe all great films use little bits of each genre to make a well rounded tale.
Above All Things is at its core a love story but a supernatural story too. It is the haunting of a grieving husband by his deceased wife. She feels his pain so much that she comes back and tries to deliver him from his bereavement. Horror stories have a tendency to use cheap tricks to frighten us. With this story, I wanted to use the supernatural to do something caring, appropriating and repurposing an overused technique. Bridgette’s motives are not revealed until the very end. We learn that the ‘haunting’ of her husband is a self-sacrificial act. Bridgette is letting Bobby go so that they can both heal. Often when a person loses someone close, they see traces of them everywhere. So when Bobby starts seeing things, it’s not such an odd phenomenon; the talking Frangelico bottle is. The audience realizes when this happens that maybe Bobby is losing grip on reality. He is on medication and keeps hitting the Frangelico bottle pretty hard. The point is that this type of self-medicating doesn’t work out well; we don’t heal on our own, we need others to help the process along. At one point the neighbor Maggie Moss removes a glass shard from his foot … once she removes it, she declares “Now, maybe that can heal” and Bridgette (his deceased wife) in essence comes back to do the same thing – to remove the shard of glass from his broken heart so now maybe that can heal.
