After a concert flyer turned paper airplane lands into the laps of two kid sisters, they infiltrate the venue to find a mindless mosh crowding a supernatural bathroom. Music video for ‘Buddha Was A Rich Boy’ by That Handsome Devil

1. What motivated you to make this film?

We all have friends that have ideas for films they want to direct. My friends not acting on their ideas after years of me cheerleading them led me to saying, “fuck it”, and maxing out two credit cards to make two music videos with That Handsome Devil in one weekend. There’s no lead-up to our death. It’s just going to happen one day to all of us. Anyone wasting the time we aren’t guaranteed drives me crazy. 

2. From the idea to the finished product, how long did it take for you to make this film?

To keep up with the release of their album, Exploitopia, there were maybe 5 months tops on the calendar. In that 5 months, maybe two weeks of it was spent putting this baby together. 

3. How would you describe your film in two words!?

Toilet Rock

4. What was the biggest obstacle you faced in completing this film?

Being beholden to the baby. There’s a lot of elements in this thing we were able to control. The baby’s performance was not one of them, but we were fortunate to get a pretty wide spectrum of emotion on-camera which served the edit fairly well. 

5. There are 5 stages of the filmmaking process: Development.

Pre-Production. Production. Post-Production. Distribution.

Distribution for sure. Good artists are never satisfied with what they’re doing and therefore must have the discipline to decide when is a good time to put the pencil down. Everything leading up to putting the pencil down is kind of an internal nightmare. 

What is your favorite stage of the filmmaking process?

Getting the artists I collaborated with (DP, producer, talent, etc.) to live in my head of references is pretty good. I get to dump a bunch of references and other art I like on them all at once and see how they process it. When I bring up “Son of the Mask”, “Butthole Surfers”, “Hazbin Hotel”, “Murder Drones”, etc. in the same sentence, it’s almost a language only I can understand.  

6. When did you realize that you wanted to make films?

I always liked it as a kid and made home movies like everyone else. I’d make edits of war footage to avoid going up in front of the class for social studies assignments. It’s always been there but it’d take me 31 years of life to really pursue what was always in me. 

7. What film have you seen the most times in your life?

I watched Cats & Dogs the other day and recently realized I knew it line for line despite me forgetting things constantly. 

8. In a perfect world: Who would you like to work with/collaborate with on a film?

If I had unlimited money and influence, I’d make a live-action F-Zero movie. Typically star-studded cast. Tommie Earl Jenkins as Captain Falcon. KMFDM doing the score alongside Carla Patullo. A combination of 1:1-scaled racing machine replicas on hydraulic rigs. Motion capturing drones racing. Long story short, half of what I want is what the average person wants, and the other half is what I want because my taste is perfect. I’m just putting this out there in case I’m never asked again. 

9. You submitted to the festival via FilmFreeway. How has your experiences been working on the festival platform site?

It’s not that different from gambling in Vegas honestly. Nothing wrong with it, but you lose more than you win. When you win, it feels great and it takes great discipline to know when to stop. 

10. What is your favorite meal?

I’m kind of a possum on this end. Not that I don’t like the finer things in life, but I’m just as happy eating a Michelin star meal as I am getting the buffalo chicken from 7 Eleven. 

11. What is next for you? A new film?

I just completed a 3-minute proof of concept for a feature documentary/animation-hybrid called Island of Garbage (Narrated by Homer Flynn of The Residents). I got a horror script I’m writing. I have intentions for my first short film to be a biopic on Buckethead but that could change. I wanna start making music when I move into my first house in Utah this year. I feel like I’m an astronaut whose job is to explore as much of the cosmos as I can before my oxygen tank runs out.