In a very simple way, Pig began as an idea to explore some of the confusion in life that I generally tend to experience. Life is a challenge in varying degrees for everyone and my main issue has always been identity. When I was a child I often daydreamed that I had been a switched baby and my real parents were somewhere out there. I didn’t dream about this because my parents were so bad or anything, but because I felt very different from them. It didn’t help that my mom told me a story that when I was born she just wanted one thing, that her child be born with blue eyes. I won’t go into the detailed reasons for this (that’s a whole other entry) but, suffice it to say, the day my mom gave birth, they brought her newborn child back to her, after circumcision I’m sure, and it had blue eyes. That was before the nurse realized they had brought her the wrong baby. To my mother’s horror they took that blue-eyed newborn away and brought me to her. And, to her relief, I also had blue eyes. Still, you can imagine the possibilities here. Was I the 2nd child? Did the nursing staff correct their error or create one? How big was the mix-up? So for a long time I really hung on to this switched baby idea. Now, I dropped that theory a long time ago because as I grew to adulthood the physical comparisons with my father were hard to dismiss. It was sexy theory that was tough to let go, but I had to. But writing this first blog entry for Pig I realize that the switched baby idea is still with me. I just call it Pig now.
Henry Barrial, writer & director
thepigpicture 