-In your opinion, what is the relationship between cinema and truth?

Everyone says truth in Cinema is 24 frames a second, but to me the truth starts in the script and flaws in characters. That’s what makes everything real, that’s where we can relate to them, and that’s where the drama created.  If we just filmed a story with perfect characters nobody would watch. People want to see the real flawed characters, and if you lie to them to market and manipulate you will get backlash as we are currently learning. Good cinema is what people want. When I started out it used to be you couldn’t lie to the camera, but nowadays anyone can make anything with AI. But original characters and stories, that make people’s heart go up, or hold their breath, that’s the stuff you can film and people will watch over and over. 

-What kind of change do you hope to inspire in someone who experiences your art?

If anything, I hope to remind them of the American grit. Everyone gets knocked down, get back up sort of thing. I don’t really have an agenda, I just try to make something that everyone will enjoy and makes you feel it in your gut. When I was writing “Brothers of Babylon” I had just started chemo and also fallen and shattered my lower back. My acting days were over and COVID began, I had to do something else. I grew up on a horse ranch in Montana and wanted to write about something going on in the modern era. I took a real problem with the opioid crisis and added in all the real life small town ranch stories I had and tried to make something most people could appreciate.  Now I have written a few other features and a ten part one hour action fantasy series, but they all have the good vs evil, and a character that is far from perfect that needs to fix themselves. 

-What does the word future mean to you?

To me it’s a hope that we don’t lose as much as we gain. Things are going to move much faster with technology and AI, but we are losing so much of the quality and fearlessness because of streaming and politics. Movies are much easier to make, but we used to make movies we would watch over and over. Oscar winners were movies you would watch every time they were on television, now people barely even watch the Oscar movies cause they aren’t that could. Every decade used to have its own genre of film and we lost that back around 2005, and I haven’t hope that the future will come around and find its new self. 

-Briefly describe your creative process. How do you select the ideas that eventually become a screenplay?

I was an actor for 15 years until I got sick, and wrote my first movie while I was going through treatment. I always start by thinking of the main character and the problem. Then I start picturing how I would shoot the scenes in my head, and write them in a notebook. I usually write most of it out long hand, and I use music a lot. I have to find the right music to fit the character to help me write. Then I choose the setting and do research, research helps a lot with ideas, and I work on arch development. But I keep it simple, picture like it’s on the tv and write it out. I tell other writers read real screenplays, most writers write because they can’t act. They don’t know how to make a performance work, but they teach and write books. They know formulas, and algorithms, and marketing, but when they start talking to me about characters psychology I just tell them to take an acting class.