Local Filmmaker Returns Home With Caregiving Drama, ‘Too Late’

Fundraising Efforts Underway To Cover Production Costs

By GAYANE TOROSYAN
OTSEGO COUNTY

Ellie Pink is coming home to make a film about leaving, or perhaps more precisely, about what it means to stay.

Pink, a Cooperstown-area native, plans to begin shooting her short film, “Too Late,” in Otsego County in early to mid-September, working with a small cast and crew to tell an intimate story about caregiving, loss, and the quiet decisions that shape a life.

“It is a story that I connect with,” Pink said. “I don’t want to push any kind of messaging at people. I want to spotlight these small-town communities…people who don’t have a lot of extravagance, the people who raised me.”

The film centers on Shannon, a woman in her 60s caring for a husband with late-stage lung cancer. Once a hairstylist for television productions in New York City, not quite “A-list,” as actor Barbara Bayes put it, Shannon followed her husband upstate, where the pace is slower, but the stakes are higher.

“I think it’s a journey for Shannon in how to keep living while her husband is dying,” Bayes said.

Bayes, who will play the lead role, knew Pink long before this project began. Years ago, Bayes worked with Pink’s mother at the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health. What began as a professional relationship became a friendship, and now, unexpectedly, a creative collaboration.

“To see Ellie grow up and pursue a career in film gives me such joy,” Bayes said. “And I am delighted to shoot a film in my own back yard.”

For Bayes, the role is not abstract; it draws directly from the experience of losing her husband, Sammy Bayes, in 2022. The couple were married for 31 years, and she said she brings something deeply personal to her portrayal of Shannon.

“I obviously 100 percent relate to this character because I became a caregiver to my husband after he became ill,” she said. “Grief is a very intense journey, and everyone will go through it in this life. What I try to do is live my life the way my husband would want me to do. It is not easy.”

“Too Late” unfolds over roughly 20 minutes, the practical limit for most short-film festival submissions, Pink noted, but its emotional reach is broader.

“Caregiving is such an amazing and awesome responsibility,” Bayes said. “We’re doing it for people we love, but it is a very difficult journey. It’s a learning process, how to care for your loved one and yourself at the same time.”

In the film, financial strain shadows the central relationship. Shannon and her husband, having left city life behind, navigate dwindling resources alongside illness.

“As caregivers, we put our needs aside,” Bayes said. “Very often it goes sideways, sleepless nights, not eating, trying to take care of the house, the bills. It’s all part of the story.”

Pink, who graduated from Boston University and has worked across multiple departments in film production, said directing remains her central focus. Her previous short, “Miss Fortune” (2023), explored darker themes beneath a stylized surface; the new project is quieter, more grounded.

“The husband doesn’t speak through the entirety of the film,” Pink said. “It’s about what’s unspoken. It’s about the choices you have to make as a caregiver. It’s also about a woman who gives herself to the people she cares about, and what it means to choose yourself.”

That tension, between obligation and selfhood, between staying and leaving, runs through the project, even as its setting remains firmly rooted in Otsego County.

“Every time I come home, businesses are shutting down,” Pink said. “People are losing their jobs. There are all these films about the 1 percent…I wanted to tell a story about people here.”

Producer Annette Milburn said the script resonated immediately.

“I am not always so lucky to work on projects I feel passionate about,” Milburn said. “When I read it, I felt something. It pulls at your heartstrings.”

For Milburn, the connection is personal.

“I recently went through the experience of watching my grandfather slowly pass away,” she said. “This story, Shannon takes it day by day, she prioritizes her husband over everything. And then there’s a moment when that changes. That stayed with me.”

The production remains modest in scale but ambitious in scope. Pink and her team are working toward a roughly $40,000.00 budget, with fundraising underway through multiple channels, including a public campaign and grant applications.

“Funding is the biggest challenge,” Milburn said. “You are pulling every connection you can, trying to get people passionate about the project.”

Approximately half the budget, Pink said, will go toward compensating a crew of about 20 people and a small cast of four. The rest will cover locations, housing, food and equipment.

“We have applied to almost every grant under the sun,” Pink said. “It is very competitive, and there are fewer resources than there were a few years ago. A lot of funding is going toward more immediate needs.”

Even so, the filmmakers see the project as an investment in the community, not just a production set here, but a story shaped by the place itself.

“We want to give back,” Pink said. “We are planning to have local screenings when the film is done and hopefully bring some business to the area.”

Part of that effort includes a call to residents: The production is seeking a filming location, a trailer, ideally in a wooded area, with the feel of a space that has not changed since the 1980s.

“If people want to donate or help in any way, anything helps,” Milburn said. “We are trying to capture the essence of this town and its culture.”

She added that even word of mouth can help the group find the locations and resources it needs.

Bayes, for her part, sees the film as both a personal reckoning and a communal one.

“Caregiving, grief, love—these are things everyone will face,” she said. “But there is also something about telling that story here, in this place. I think Ellie understands that.”

For Pink, the film ultimately returns to the place where she grew up.

“We are a small group of artists,” she said, “who want to tell a story about the community that raised me.”

The project’s crowdfunding page at https://www.indiegogo.com/en/projects/ellie-pink/too-late1 or tinyurl.com/toolateotsego includes a budget breakdown, a production timeline, and rewards for potential donors. The fundraiser will continue until Sunday, June 21, with $11,050.00 raised from 22 backers at the time of this writing.