Filmmaker Statement

The last movie I made was about a caveman. It was 8 minutes long but based on a 3 page script. There was no dialogue and largely featured a bearded man in the woods aimlessly wandering in and out of distorted frames with moody music and vivid sound design guiding the way. I’d like to say that I directed this movie based on some higher calling from the universe, but when it comes down to the brass tax of it all, I think I was just using too many psychedelic drugs at the time. That was May 2021, and for over a year, I didn’t direct anything. It seemed fitting that at some point I’d have to take a break. After all, the caveman short was my 17th in eight years, and even after all of that hard work and a bad feature film I made in college stuffed in between, I didn’t feel as though I was making the sort of progress I wanted as a director. I took that time to figure out what sort of stories I really wanted to tell, because even though I had a general interest in worlds like those of the caveman, what I really wanted to do was tell stories about… people. *Today’s* people. That’s why when Cory and I started talking about making a tried and true mumblecore in the summer of 2022, I felt ready to re-discover my voice as a director. With Actually Good I feel as though I let myself drop most all of the bells and whistles to simply tell a story about a breakup and a job interview. My background is theatre - usually extremely low budget theatre. Performance, a couple props, basic costumes and whatever equipment we had at our disposal was generally all we had to bring those theatrical pieces to life. It felt very much the same with Actually Good, and though I’ll let Cory speak directly to the circumstances of this story and why he wanted to tell it when he did, I was thrilled to dive back into a world where the basics came first. Cory and I are both huge fans of the Duplass Brothers, specifically their 2003 short film “This is John,” which independently played a major role in both of our introductions to filmmaking. Actually Good is meant as a contemporary ode or maybe even response to that early contribution from the Duplass Brothers. We spent 9 months editing this movie, the longest I’ve spent editing… anything, even the feature. I had no idea the whale of an undertaking that making a mumblecore movie apparently turned out to be. I went into this experience hoping to reconnect with a simple human story, and thankfully, I achieved that goal. There was adversity faced at every single corner, but hey, what’s filmmaking without it. I’m just glad to be here, back on Film Freeway, this time with a movie about like… a guy. And not a caveman. And I dunno, it’s funny. I hope you like it. I really do, and that’s weird for me.