At the end of 2014, we asked for your creative resolutions for the New Year — and we heard from hundreds of you. We’re following four people throughout 2015, including a calligrapher in Washington State; a reggae DJ in Ohio; a diorama artist in California; and Joseph Riedel, an aspiring director and screenwriter in New York.
Riedel lives outside of New York City. He resolved to make a web series — a comedy — about his experience of dealing with a brain tumor. (Read part of the pilot for his series, A Good Sense of Tumor.) Riedel had surgery in January, and he tells Kurt Andersen that the prognosis is good. “My doctor believes he removed the entire tumor and with all the information we currently have, there’s a very good chance that we’re tumor- and cancer-free.” Recovery has been slow, but it’s also provided a lot of material for the show: “I can find the humor in things again, which is nice,” Riedel says.
But the slow pace of his recovery has changed Riedel’s plans — instead of producing several episodes out of the gate, he’ll focus on making his pilot episode, which will help him raise funds for the project. In the meantime, he’s surrounded himself with help. “I have a small skeleton team right now. We’re all really excited to get things rolling.”