Hello Aaron,what was your motivation to produce this film

 

Like many artists, thinkers, and people, I find the idea of mortality both fascinating and scary and much of my thought is devoted to the topic. I was researching another project when I ran across a quote from Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near:

 

"Death is a tragedy... when people speak of losing a part of themselves when a loved one dies, they are speaking quite literally, since we lose the ability to effectively use the neural patterns in our brain that had self-organized to interact with that person."

 

My thought was - what if we could create a drug that targeted those neural patterns and gave us new experiences with the ones we'd lost in our dreams? I took the concept to my longtime collaborator, Parker Croft, who loved the idea and we knew we had to produce a film exploring that idea.

 

Tell us about yourself. Why did you choose this career

 

I grew up in a family that prized both art and psychology, so it always felt to me that story-telling and filmmaking was a natural combination of those two fields. The thing I love most about movies is their ability to put ourselves inside of each other's minds, while creating works of art that dazzle the soul. I've never really been interested in any other career.

 

If you can describe your experience making this film with one word, what would it be

 

Triumphant.

 

Tell us about the obstacles you faced during making this film

 

Every film involves so many challenges and obstacles. We wrote a feature film script about this idea before adapting that to a short film. So a big obstacle was trying to figure out how to fit the idea into a much smaller package.

 

I think beyond that, there's the whole fund-raising/affording one's life that comes into play with filmmaking. Living in LA is expensive and making movies is expensive, so trying to figure out a way to juggle it all can be stressful and exhausting.

 

Tell us a few things about the director and co writer  of the film Parker Croft

 

Parker is a true artist, someone who marches to the beat of his own drum and buzzes with creativity. I've learned so much about art and life from him over the years and I can't wait to keep our creative journey going.

 

Tell us a few things about the story and the screenplay

 

Like I mentioned, As Easy As Closing Your Eyes was an adaptation from our feature film Late Radiance, however we decided not to just make a shortened version of the feature film. Late Radiance is a story about a widower who has remarried and rebuilt his life, who starts taking Amesten to see his first wife, while AEACYE is about a mother taking Amesten to see her late son. There are so many versions of this story that could be told, it was a treat to get to explore two different narratives.

 

Tell us a few things about the casting

 

Casting this film took a long time, we saw hundreds of tapes for each role. Ultimately we chose two actors we knew for a long time, however, my college classmate Laura Coover as our female lead Lila and Parker's co-star from Field of Lost Shoes, Sean Marquette. They came in and made the roles their own, we were so fortunate and couldn't be happier with their performances.

 

Tell us a few things about the key crew

 

We had such amazing people in key crew positions. As a sound mixer, I've had the fortune of meeting a lot of other talented crew members. Our DP, Zak Sandberg, and I had worked together on another short, and he came on and did an incredible job. And then we had the fortune of finding our composer Mandy Hoffman, and her score is one of my favorite parts of the entire film.

 

What are your favorite films Why

 

My favorite films are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Charlie Kaufman/Michel Gondry, There Will Be Blood by PT Anderson, and The Fall by Tarsem Singh. Why is an interesting question... they are extraordinarily creative, expansive visions that ultimately tell deep stories of what it means to be a human, and that's the kind of story-telling that I like most.

 

Thanks for having As Easy As Closing Your Eyes at Mediterranean Film Festival Cannes Milan Athens!