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Q&A with Michael Barnett, Alex Schmider and Clare Tucker

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Changing the Game.

Michael, I understand you came to the project when a friend shared that they had a child that was transgender. How important was it to make this film in order to become that much more of an advocate for marginalized people?

Michael Barnett: When I was approached by people that I care very deeply for, and as they navigated what this meant for them and for their family, I suddenly realized that my notion of what it means to be supportive needed to be interrogated a bit deeper. As I went on this journey, I very quickly realized that I didn’t understand much of what they brought to me and I really needed to investigate and educate myself, and get to work in order to sharpen my own knowledge and empathy and sharpen my own tools to be there to support and provide a little love for this family. Initially the point of it wasn’t to make a film. The goal was to go to work and be an ally and advocate as supportively as possible. And that’s when I came across Mack Beggs’ story. His story was compelling to me because at the moment I discovered it, it was helping me contextualize a lot of the work I was trying to do. It had a specificity to it that a lot of people found complex. I started unpacking it in real time before it kind of blew up and became such a big debate.  But again, the objective wasn’t to make a film but to contextualize and learn as much as I could. And then the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t shake Mack. His story was starting to crescendo in the media and I brought it to Clare [Tucker, producer], my creative partner, and we started talking about what it would look like. The complexity of making the film didn’t lie in Mack’s story because we knew what we wanted to say; the complexity of it lied in us as a filmmaking team. Before we reached out to Mack, we called Alex [Schmider, producer], who was working in transgender media representation at GLAAD and we wanted to start a very hard conversation and challenge ourselves. Should we make this film? Should it be us? Should the film exist? Do you want to be a part of this or know someone that does? And that’s when it began for real, when Alex signed on. And then we tried to proceed as sensitively and cautiously as possible.

people need to see who they’re legislating against

Alex, what was your reaction when this film was brought to you?

Alex Schmider: My reaction working at GLAAD and seeing a lot of different projects from well-meaning, well-intentioned cisgender people was that I was very hesitant and skeptical because often the intentions aren’t there to tell accurate and authentic stories about the community. So when I got a cold call from Clare and Michael, I had a lot of questions and I also began reckoning with my own personal discomfort around the subject. We are all educated under the same media blanket and I started realizing that I had a lot of discomfort that I needed to work through. Immediately upon meeting and talking to Michael and Clare, I knew that these were filmmakers that were committed to returning these stories to these young people. And were also committed, as I was, to doing the internal work so that these stories really serve as sources of pride for the young people involved. So I was hesitant and cautious throughout the process, but we’ve been working together now for four and a half years. These people are my family, we’ve had very hard conversations about what makes it on screen and what doesn’t, how it does it, who is it trying to reach, and why? I do believe the film is as powerful as it is due to this trusting collaboration. I’m working with some of the best filmmakers and I’m a newbie to this world. I got to learn from them and they got to learn from me and there was just trust and openness about how we each came to the table and I think the result is a beautiful testament to how the film was created with love.

Clare, what did you feel was so important to share with the audience about the three primary subjects? I also appreciate how their adversaries stayed in the background of the film but still showed us there was work to be done.

Clare Tucker: When we first met all these kids, that was the first thing we wanted to show: that they’re kids. This is who you are talking about. These are their faces, their personalities, these are their interests and hopes and fears and dreams. Michael Alex and I, through filming and through editing threw a lot of things at the table and discussed different thematics, but the one thing that stayed consistent was that we wanted the kids to represent themselves and tell their own stories. As for that other group, it’s just as important to hear that side but the film obviously takes a stance and we obviously take a stance. It’s what these kids are up against and we did need to show that side and what it’s doing to these kids and their lives—the good, the bad, the ugly, all of it.  

So much has happened since you started this film four and a half years ago in regards to these issues.

CT: It’s interesting because as Michael explained earlier, we started this film because of this very personal story and this family he knows. We certainly never thought there was going to be a lawsuit that was going to get national attention and that state after state would have all this awful legislation. This was all before that. Our concerns were on an administration level, school to school, state to state. This was not a big topic in the news. It’s been crazy to watch what has happened the last eighteen months in terms of this topic. We had already made the film, so we really wanted to get it out there because people need to see who they’re legislating against. People need to see these kids to understand what they’re even talking about. It’s like Michael always says, it’s like arguing about a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. We felt more and more that we needed to get this film out to the public however we could. Thankfully Hulu gave it a chance.

AS: As a trans man, working from my own discomfort throughout this whole filmmaking process and untangling all that I internalized about my personal ability to belong and be in the world, I’ve been so inspired to watch these young people knowing who they are at a such a young age and being so unapologetic and asserting themselves in how they know themselves by what they love to do. It’s been such an incredible journey to watch them grow up and come into their voices and come into their adulthood. We talk about kids… they’re young adults now! I’m so excited to see what their future holds because this next generation—fortunately through social media and films like this—are going to get to see themselves reflected and relate to these heroes and their own stories. Simultaneously we need more stories about the Grandma Nancy’s and the Ngozi’s and the Jen’s and Tom’s of the world because in order to find your path to allyship, to showing up, you have to see road maps for that. I think what’s so beautiful about the film is that we see that love and support crosses political party lines; it crosses religious lines. It crosses all of these lines that are drawn in the sand and ultimately when we get to know people as people and respect and accept them and create a world that’s safe and free for people to live, we are going to benefit and see the beauty in that, I hope.

I imagine there needs to be extra sensitivity when dealing with teens. How did you gain their trust before filming?

Michael Barnett: That was a process. We went out to Texas a year before we even brought a camera out to meet with Mack and his family. We had dozens and dozens of conversations with the family to express what our intentions were, to let them know that once the smoke cleared of all this media that we were still going to be there to tell their story through their words, as authentically as possible. And we did that with all of the families to build that trust. That’s pretty rare for us as filmmakers, to spend that much time without a camera. To just be there and be with them, and build that trust together.

Q&A with Euros Lyn

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of Dream Horse.

What were some of the bigger challenges you faced in making this film?

Euros Lyn: One of the things we worked very hard on, as a team, was to collaborate so that every department – the production designer Daniel Taylor, Sian Jenkins the costume designer, and photography, makeup, locations – worked together very closely so that we always had a united concept of what every… so that cohesion (of color palette and of tone and of authenticity) was something that every department was constantly talking to each other about. I think, very often in film production, you can become quite siloed, and you only focus on your own work, because it’s such an enormous team; it’s hard to see across all the other departments. But we kept on talking. One of the interesting things about this project was that it was an incredibly lovely bunch of people. And we all got along socially very well. That camaraderie behind the camera very much reflects the camaraderie you see on the screen. And I think it rubs off. I think it’s there because this film is made with love by everybody who was involved with it. I’d also like to pay a lot of credit to the editor, Jamie Pearson, and the sound design team. Because those races were recorded totally without sound. Because when you’re shooting a horse traveling at forty miles per hour there’s a vehicle, and there’s an engine, and there’s the noise of the crew… and so every single piece of sound, every breath and every hoof and every jangle of the horse’s tack and bridle was put on afterwards by the sound design team. Their meticulous work was incredibly important to create the realism and drama of the races.

feeling like there is hope on the horizon, that we’re coming out of it at last

Can you talk a little bit about casting the animals? They are so integral to the film in every conceivable way. Not just the horses, either!

EL: I’m not from a horse racing background, so one of the first things we needed to solve in pre-production for this film was how we were going to make these races feel as truthful and as honest and as exciting and as dramatic as possible. And one of the first things we did was approach a company called The Devil’s Horsemen, who are the people who supplied horses for Game of Thrones, and kind of… you know, they’ve been around for decades, doing some of the best British film work. We had a fantastic horse master named Tom [Cox] who advised us on how we might approach the horse racing from a filming perspective. So what we did in the end, we had to cast thirty thoroughbred race horses in order to play ten horses on screen. And we kept them in a rotation so that they never got tired, and we only ever shot stretches of two furlongs (which is about four hundred yards) at a time, in order to keep them completely out of harms way. They were never at any risk. So that was a huge logistical challenge, to kind of break every race down into those little chunks and to schedule them. We shot all the races in about six days, which was… it was like a military operation! And my Director of Photography, Erik Wilson, and first assistant director Peter Bennett, were absolutely invaluable in kind of piece together this huge bible of paperwork that every camera team on the racing track could then kind of understand that at 9am, they were going to be at point A, and 9:40am they were going to be at point B, shooting this shot on the horses… and that’s how we managed it. But the rest of the cast of animals – the ducks, the dogs, the goat – they were all local and came from South Wales. The wolfhound that’s in the opening frame of the film, lying on the bed, he was actually the least cooperative of all the animals! As long as he had to lay down, he was fine. But the rest of the time, it involved a lot of patience… and on the actors part as well, actually, to kind of coax him into the right place.

What was the timeline for this film, from first being conceived to premiere?

EL: I first got involved about five years ago, when Katherine Butler had been talking to Neal McKay, the writer, and she got in touch with me and she asked if I’d be interested in being involved. Which I instantly said yes to, because it was a story that I knew. It was a story that had been in the press, and it kind of captured the public imagination, and had almost become a myth at that point. So it was a story I knew, but about five years ago, it must have been not long after the Brexit vote in the U.K., and Trump had been elected in the States, and there was this air of division, and divisiveness, all around. And it felt like a story that needed to be told in response to those events. A story about people coming together, wanting to do something good for its own sake. They didn’t want to make money; this wasn’t about creating a business in order to make loads of cash and to let them escape their normal lives. This was about doing something just for the sake of it. And in so doing, kind of actually forming, and strengthening, the sense of community and of togetherness. And we screened it – the premier was at Sundance, which was a year and a half ago (Sundance 2020), and we could hear the stories coming out of China, and there was talk of the virus, and so there was something… there were dark clouds gathering on the horizon when we first screened it. But nobody could have imagined that this would have laid our society so low, and caused so much pain and so much grief for so many people. And it seems strange now, that here is a story about a group of underdogs, about people who have suffered this enormous adversity, coming together, overcoming these challenges, and coming out the other side and celebrating their common humanity, celebrating these things and qualities that are inspiring and good about us as human beings. And it felt like it was about being alive, and being human in a very important way. I hadn’t watched the film, myself, for a good year, until a couple of weeks ago! And watching it again… I felt emotional, I felt the tears coming. In part that was informed by this experience we’ve all been through, with COVID. And now feeling like there is hope on the horizon, that we’re coming out of it at last. And hopefully this is a film that will speak to audiences about the possibility, about the amazing possibility, of humans when we come together to do something good as a community.

Q&A with Michael Rianda, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of The Mitchells vs the Machines.

This film has been long in the making and is clearly a heartfelt project. Mike, can you tell us how it all started?

Michael Rianda: Sony had approached me about making a movie and because these movies take so long, I thought what can I make that I already have in mind? I have this burning furnace of love in my heart for my family. They’re sort of eccentric and strange and I would always connect to people when I talked about my family because I think everyone secretly thinks their family is nuts but they don’t want to admit it. But as soon as I’d admit it, everyone was like, oh yeah great mine too! I tell this story a lot, but my dad really is a nature-loving crazy person and once he woke me up at five in the morning and was like “Mike, wake up, we gotta build these bathtubs in the middle of the woods so we can legally be naked in nature, right?!” I had no idea what he was talking about and my mother was like, “he saw it on a Viagra commercial.” And the crazy thing was that he actually built them, and everyone thought he was nuts, and I thought he was nuts, but whenever anyone saw the tubs they were like, Brian these are incredible. I realized in those moments and my dad’s commitment to making them that he’s really a crazy person making these tubs against all logic, and I’m a crazy person making cartoons against all logic. Suddenly I felt close to him and found a kind of empathy for my parents that made me see them as humans for the first time. One of the reasons for the movie is that I was finally able to sort of see parenting through their eyes.

Phil Lord: I’m curious about your father’s understanding of the law. He’s not a lawyer, is he?

MR: He’s not a lawyer! And he’s also like “I don’t own this land but I have a handshake deal with John Harrington wink wink.” So he built these on someone else’s land?! “Don’t worry about it,” he told me.

PL: I understand the way common-law works is that if you put a tub in a field that you own that land. Once you take a bath, it’s yours!

Christopher Miller: And that led somehow to you making a movie about your family AND a robot apocalypse.  

MR: And the robot apocalypse came because it was funny for me to imagine a character like my dad dealing with technology because he loves nature so much. As a kid I loved robots, and as an adult I became really fascinated by the idea that robots and AI can do some of the same things we can do now. And if that’s the case, what is it about humanity that perseveres and is worth saving. The collaborations we have with one another, they’re hard but worth fighting for.

It was really trying to reflect our own teenage enthusiasm about film

The family element is so crucial. The pacing of the film is wonderful and allows that disconnect between Katie and Rick to breathe. As producers, how did you advocate for this type of pacing in the film?

PL: We met Mike in the hallways of Sony animation. There was this energy seeping into the hallways and we looked into his office and saw piles of papers, no empty surfaces, and we were like, oh, this reminds us of us. Chris and I make a lot of densely-paced, tightly-packed movies. If you can believe it, things like The Lego Movie at one point moved even faster and we’ve learned some things over time. There’s a famous story about an early test screening of The Lego Movie where a passionate collaborator said “this movie is too long, we need to take ten minutes out,” and we realized the reason it felt long was because people didn’t have enough time to engage. So we said no problem, yes sir, we’re going to take ten minutes out, and then we secretly put ten minutes into the movie and it allowed you to watch characters make choices and take in information and think before they acted and it actually made the movie play a million times faster. In this movie we spent a lot of time working with Mike and his team trying to make the emotional storytelling really land so that we could have a crazy Furby attack sequence and it would be welcomed by the audience instead of a distraction. What Mike has done so beautifully is take all these zany things and given them meaning in the family, which when we tested the movie was the thing that was indestructible.

CM: From the beginning, the family felt personal and the story felt really emotional and the creativity and density of the comedy was undeniable. It was about shaping it in a way that really allowed the audience to engage with all sides and all members of the family, where there was a real growth arc for everybody. The great thing about Mike and Jeff [Rowe, co-director] is that they were so willing to try a million things and they were never satisfied. If we suggested moving something or trying something new, they always had great ideas and they’d try anything to make it better than it was before. And they never gave up until it finally came out on Netflix. And even then, they were still adding bits and trying and were overflowing with energy and passion.

MR: We made a mistake early on with Chris and Phil where we were like “we want this to be the greatest animated movie of all time and we want to it to be really grounded and wonderful!” and then they unfortunately held us to those wild claims.

You employ so many wonderful pop-culture references to appeal to those old and young from Portrait of a Lady on Fire to T2. These are such great marriages of ideas. How did you balance that?

MR: In the whole movie, we’re trying to be observational and true to our own experiences. Me and Jeff went to film school and were jacked-up teenagers who were like, we’re going to study every Paul Thomas Anderson movie! We were trying to tap into that fervor for film and what someone growing up right now would be excited about. We had just seen Portrait of a Lady on Fire and it was amazing and it really seemed like Katie would love it. We looked at the type of people we worshipped at her age and thought about who Katie would worship. It was really trying to reflect our own teenage enthusiasm about film. I made these goofy Criterion Collection knockoff films, so I had Katie do it. We wanted to embrace our memories about that passion.

PL: In cinema culture, the distinction between what’s highbrow and lowbrow has sort of collapsed, right? You’re on film twitter and people are like, Demolition Man is a masterpiece! And we’re born of that theory that you can love a crazy silly movie and that it is cinematic, and so is a French drama about nineteenth-century lovers on an island. You can have an appetite for both and they can both inform a young filmmaker.

CM: It’s also not like Mike and Jeff and us were sitting in a room and trying to pick jokes that would appeal to this demographic or that demographic. We would find things that would appeal to us or make us laugh, or try to put it through the lens of what we think the character would say or feel. There was never data science and trying to fit these references into boxes; it was more about amusing ourselves.

MR: That was the big rule—does it make us laugh? And since we’re man-children, we cover all spectrums!

PL: Since we’re so immature, we match up pretty well with kids. I like that her taste in movies kind of legitimizes her crazy dog films as art. She’s not making them to get clicks; she’s making them because she thinks they are great works of art.

Mike, this is your first feature but you’ve been working in animation for a long time. I looked at your first short and it is so incredibly uncanny how it’s a spiritual cousin of this film. Can you talk about developing your voice?

MR: I think finding your voice is really difficult. I do think when I was younger, it was really through a process of failing that I found my voice. I would do things that were too goofy or too slapstick, or on the other hand, too personal and uncomfortable. I had to find a balance because I had sort of comedy Tourette’s where I desperately wanted people to think I’m funny. Then I would try to balance that with a story that people actually cared about. In that short, the impetus was that I was working at a job that drove me insane. I was doing data entry at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is a wonderful place but data entry is not a wonderful job. So I worked at the aquarium and everyone had stars in their eyes like, do you feed the fish? And I was like, no I enter people’s names into the membership bank! But in both films, I was trying to take this kernel of truth. In the movie it’s about family and in the short it was about working and finding your passion. And then I was trying to tell both of them in the most entertaining way that’s as funny as possible but also as true as possible. Try to fit those two things together is where I got my voice.

Q&A with Robert Machoian and Clayne Crawford

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of The Killing of Two Lovers.

Can you discuss your inspiration for writing this story?

Robert Machoian: It was really motivated, to some degree, my own life in the sense that I’ve been married for quite a while, and I have children, and coming to this period in life where many friends of ours were starting to separate. And separating while having children. And then some of my male friends in these situations acting very kind of out-of-character as they were beginning to realize that they were losing the every day experiences with their kids. That discussions about parenting they were having suddenly had only to do with weekends, and with packing the lives of their children into weekends. And many of these individuals were and are great fathers. So all of a sudden I was living in this world, and I wanted to explore it, to have a dialog about it. I wrote a short film called The Drift, and after talking with Clayne about it, we knew we should expand it, stretch it into a feature story instead of having it be just a short.

it’s a complexity of character that you rarely see in a script

Clayne, what were your impressions on first read-through? What made you want to play David?

Clayne Crawford: I guess as it relates to being in every scene of the film, I can’t say I was intimidated by that, or concerned about that. It was more a sense of excitement, really, knowing Robert’s style of filmmaking, and that I was going to have moments to allow this character just to be present. It’s just the style in which Robert makes films that really energized me and made me enthusiastic to get to know the character of David, and to understand where he was coming from, and to understand how broken he was… it’s a complexity of character that you rarely see in a script. And then in the next scene, he’s giggling with his children and telling jokes. Just how complex a character David was was really fascinating. That gave me a lot of hope as it related to the success of the story and the film, and especially that opening scene which, albeit jarring, forces the audience to have an immediate opinion of the character, and now they’ve got to sit with that for the next hour and twenty minutes, and how are they going to feel afterward? From a creative standpoint, that was all very interesting to me.

Did you know the kids before the shoot started, Clayne?

CC: One hundred percent. I’ve known most of Robert’s children since they were babies. We were in this small little town– Robert had rented out an artist’s loft (from a friend of his who lived down in Utah), and this loft was part of the century gymnasium that had been abandoned that the artist friend had turned into this beautiful space. And we were all just… there! If we weren’t in our own spaces sleeping, then we were there. So Jonah, for instance (the youngest), he climbed up into [Sepideh Moafi’s] lap right after dinner the day that she came to town, and fell asleep. So, they instinctively knew what was necessary to build a connection. Which was really special, and it’s just something… you know, where there are hotels, and you’re in a big city, and there’s a lot of money, and trailers… you don’t get the opportunities that we had on this film, because, again, we were all eating together and hanging out together all day every day. 

The story is many things at once: a family drama, a romance, a thriller, and at times, a horror story. How did you approach the sound design for such a complicated dramatic tone, and as an actor, did that figure into your preparation at all?

RM: Immediately, when we knew we were going to be doing this film, I reached out to Peter [Albrechtsen] to really begin to discuss this exact topic. What I said to him was that we were going to be shooting the film in a way that required the sound design to play a significant role in helping the audience understand David’s mental state, and to get at the chaos of him. Because I felt that if we could, as an audience, understand how challenging life is for him at the moment, and not do it in a dialog scene with his best friend or something like that… and to build it, we would understand the risks that David was taking. There might be a decision that David makes, or that we hope he will not make, and through sound come to understand the chaos in and of itself – not that you would understand it per se – but that you would help the audience get at the essence of what was going on in his head during those challenging moments. So early on Peter and I really discussed it in depth. I discussed it with Clayne as well, and he can speak to that, but I don’t know that even he or I really understood where we’d end up going with the sound until Peter contributed.

CC: I agree, I think that was what was exciting about this approach that we took, the indie approach that we took where it was pretty much just Robert and I kind of in charge of how the film was going to be put together. And to give someone like Peter – who we both felt was extremely talented – a lot of freedom. Sometimes you spend a lot of time and energy just trying to get someone who you’re working with to get to the level that you’re wanting the film to be, and with Peter he showed up on day one and far exceeded what we were expecting. So I agree with Robert– I didn’t expect, and I don’t even know… I don’t think even Peter expected the sound design to play throughout the film as much as it did. And I just feel like it elevated the film in such a way to where we felt David’s state of mind – as Robert mentioned – without him having to articulate it. We felt what he was going through.

Q&A with Quoc Bao Tran and Yuji Okumoto

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The following questions and answers are excerpted from a conversation that followed the NBR screening of The Paper Tigers.

This film is a heartfelt look at the Kung Fu genre as well as a story about growing up and fatherhood in various forms. What was the catalyst for the story?

Bao Tran: I survived a death match and wanted to tell a story about it… no, I wish it were that dramatic but it’s not! A lot of the camcorder scenes you see in the film are a homage to the types of films I made growing up in the backyard with my dad’s camcorder. As an Asian-American it’s not the most encouraging profession to get into, so there was a lot of sneaking out to do so and a lot of that vibe went into this story. Making movies as a hobby is different than going into it as a profession. As I was getting older and getting into the business side of it and dealing with some of the seedier stuff, I was feeling a little jaded and worn out. So I wanted to rekindle the passion I once had for filmmaking. The other love I had growing up was Martial Arts. I bounced off that as an idea and that’s how I rolled it into The Paper Tigers—I wanted to rediscover the things I once had passion for and see if they still held meaning. I was watching The Big Chill, and it’s a bit like a “Kung Fu Big Chill” while it’s also its own thing of loving the genre and turning it askew.

I wanted to rediscover the things I once had passion for and see if they still held meaning

Yuji, how did you become involved in the project?

Yuji Okumoto: Like Bao, I too survived a death match—it’s called independent filmmaking. Bao and I have known each other since 2009 and worked together on several projects up here in Seattle Washington. Being a big fan of Kung Fu and growing up with the genre and participating in Karate, I read the script and I loved the idea of these washed-up dudes trying to find their glory. I can relate to that… I’m 62 and if I were to try and throw a kick right now, I might pull a hamstring. But the main reason I jumped on board was because I wanted to be part of a project that had a minority aspect to it. If I could be part of a film that features good lead roles for minorities, I was down.

It’s safe to save both of you are former Martial Arts practitioners in some shape or form.

BT: Yeah, and it’s definitely a love letter to Bruce Lee’s influence here in Seattle. We kind of have an unsung scene here that can get overlooked for the bigger cities. But when Bruce first arrived here after coming over from Hong Kong, he opened up a Martial Arts school here, he got married here, he went to the University of Washington. A lot of his students that he taught back in the day—who were very multi-cultural and multi-racial, since he was one of the first to teach non-Chinese Kung Fu—are still around. They’re still teaching and passing on the things they learned from Bruce. In many ways, we are in that grand lineage of Bruce Lee. That’s the part of the backdrop as well.

Speaking of diversity, how did you come up the cast?

BT: With casting, we kind of knew what the breakdown was going to be. I obviously wanted it to reflect my childhood and my friends within my Kung Fu experience and the dynamic that we had among each other. When we began to fundraise, we got a lot of notes to make it more “bankable” and to add more opportunities to cast white actors. We had a bunch of offers on the table and we didn’t bite because it would have required us to change that breakdown. So we said thanks but no thanks, and went to Kickstarter and tried to find different investors completely outside of LA and the traditional film financing structure.

How long did the whole process take?

BT: Ten years of clawing and scratching; nothing was linear. If we really break it down, nothing was traditional about the way we made this film. We had a portion of the film at about year five. We had some of the money in place and decided to shoot the first ten pages of the film, when the characters are younger in the 80s and 90s portion. So you have the pre-teen and the young adult versions and we knew we could shoot them out and be done with it. It was categorically a short film according to SAG because they didn’t know what to do with us! Once we had part of the movie in hand, we used that as a pitch reel and for on our Kickstarter and went to a few film labs and found a sales agent from that and then were able to shoot the film two years later. In a lot of ways, the casts were stand-alones because we didn’t know who our main cast was going to be when we shot the earlier footage.  We wanted to shoot to put it in the can; shooting to make a reel felt like a waste of time.

Fatherhood and legacies and disciples are such strong themes in this film. Can you speak to that a bit?

BT: For me, I saw Danny as a person escaping and running away from responsibility. And then at the end, he can’t squirm away anymore. It’s time for him to confront where he is. We talked about code-switching a lot. When he’s with his kid or ex-wife, Danny can be that charmer, but when he’s with his brothers, that won’t get by them. And he’s also their senior, so when he says something with authority, it goes. But that comes with accountability; if he flakes out in front of them, there’s hell to pay. In that third act, we wanted to land in that moment where his shirking his Kung Fu responsibility is also his shirking his “dad” responsibility and to have that all come to a head.

YO: The character of Danny has a great arc. He started off as this studly guy and then he has a fall from grace and becomes a regular dude that has lost his skills and his mojo. His dynamic shifted as the film progressed—he’s still trying to be that father figure but I just think he wasn’t able to take the time to communicate with his son. That’s the crux of his whole problem, the communication factor… asking his son to lie about this and cover for that. It’s a wonderful character because he’s flawed and as human beings, we’re all flawed in different ways. I think a lot of people will be able to relate to Danny’s character and when he triumphs at the end, I think it’s a payoff for both his character and the audience.  

Yuji, what were some of the challenges you faced as a producer on the film?

YO: There were a ton of them, especially when you’re doing indie! The biggest challenge for the producers as a collective was that we’re all creators and come from the creative side of the business. But being a producer, we have to be able to fundraise. Asking for a few dollars here and a few there is really hard but it all adds up. At the end of the day, what we realized by going through this whole journey was that it does take a village to make this all come together. It’s a collective of a wonderful support group and everyone we reached out to really stepped up. It was a roller coaster of emotions and wins and losses but we were so lucky to have this support system up here in Seattle Washington.