Jesse Harris, Filmmaker: I think if you stop being creative and writing and
using that muscle you lose that muscle and I think that's what
had happened and so I wasn't getting all these ideas anymore of like what I was going to make…
Film Courage: And how long was the original script?
Jesse: The feature script? The feature script was I don't know 100 pages or something
and I think it's turned into a hour and 40 minute movie I think.
Film Courage: Was it originally called Borrego?
Jesse: Yep, it's always been called Borrego. I hate naming things like I'm actually horrible and
picking titles and names for things so my names are never that original but Borrego is the name
of the desert that the movie takes place in and then in Spanish it also means like lamb or sheep
and that has a connection also to the character and some of the story so it made sense and
in the end it became this word that not everyone even knows how to say it and it's confusing but
it's it's a little mysterious and I think it works it works for the
film and draws people in I guess and I yeah who knows we'll see I guess.
Film Courage: I like it and the Anza Borrego desert is right
where San Diego and Baja California crossover?
Jesse: Exactly it's Anza Borrego desert is where the US Mexico border meets on one side surrounded
by the mountains next to San Diego on the other side and then the Salton Sea on the
other side so it's it's really this no man's land of sorts of California where it's this huge desert
area that has very little population really almost no towns it's just this massive desert
most of it is this state park and but it's a beautiful landscape stunning deserts and
and there really isn't a lot filmed there my my parents had been going there to escape the
seattle winters and so I would go and visit them and that's how I get introduced to this this
landscape and it just seemed like a a really compelling place for a movie to take place
what's the premise for Borrego so the premise for Borrego is it's about a young botanist who
moves to this really small town in the middle of the California desert she's there to study this
invasive plant that's growing out in the wild in the desert and she's leaving some things in
her life behind and so she decides to go and take this job for several months to be alone
out in the desert and while she's there she's deep out in the middle of the desert by herself
the sun's going down she's getting ready to go drive back to town for the night
and all of a sudden this little tiny airplane like an ultralight plane crashes right next to
where she is in the desert and she goes over to see if this person's alive if she can help and he
is he is alive but there's there's these packages of drugs scattered across the desert floor and
he she realizes that he's survived but he's basically gonna shoot her and kill her
take her truck and go and keep driving these drugs to where he was supposed to be flying this plane
but she convinces him that he has no idea where he is it's the middle of the desert it's the middle
of the night there no roads she's only been there a few days but she tells him that she knows this
desert like the back of her hand and that if she doesn't he doesn't kill her she'll help him get
to where he's going and so they eventually basically end up using each other to survive
and get out of the desert meanwhile the person who was supposed to receive these drugs is like
where are these drugs and goes in to go find him and there's a few other characters the
sheriff of the town his daughter and even though the film is set in this drug border world story
and that's everything I just explained but that's really not what the movie's about the
movie is really this movie of survival and choices that people make and from the beginning I really
didn't want to make a drug movie that's really not what this is it's it's really
this more personal movie of the choices you make and and how those impacts basically
the rest of your life or or the other people around you and the movie's this just compelling
thriller basically in the desert lots of action lots of emotion and hopefully a fun entertaining
movie and you wrote it for a female protagonist yeah I think so the the the original idea for
the movie came about because my dad is this amateur botanist and he was out in the desert
in this real area Borrego Springs and he had found with some of the people he had found
this invasive plant that was growing and this is a very tiny little town it's not even its
official city it's like unincorporated San Diego county and so they were gonna basically try to get
a grant and bring a botanist in to come and study this and help them figure out how to eradicate it
and he told me that and I was like this is an amazing setup for why someone would come to a
town and so from there I started building out this idea of what would someone be running away
from and why would someone come to this town and and then after that found an article about
a a drug plane that had crashed somewhat nearby than that desert and that they were using these
ultra lights which are basically like gliders with a little tiny engine like very janky little planes
because they fly so low and slow they don't really get picked up by the radar like a real plane would
but they also crashes because they're really homemade sometimes and carrying lots of drugs
and so I put those two together I knew that to make a commercial appealing film that I needed
to have some sort of aspect like that into it but I didn't I didn't want to make a border movie or a
drug movie I wanted to to make a really personal movie of survival and choices and so that's
just what sets up this whole action and becomes then a more intimate film
about this botanist and yeah I think I don't know I from the beginning she was always a
a female character I don't that wasn't like I was like oh I gotta make a female character it
was more just I guess what made sense and I think quickly became really compelling
I mean my mom was super strong like woman and so I think I also just grew up like around that and so
I don't know I think it was just it felt so I guess natural to me which doesn't make sense
because I'm a man but it just was it felt almost more natural to write that than to write as a guy
sure and the stakes are higher in some sense because she's got to survive and
there's there's a fear element of things yeah no for sure and no I mean it becomes a really
interesting dynamic in the desert and it's a lot of people would expect it to become like a
love story or something like that and it doesn't have any of that it's it's it's really this just
this story of of what are you willing to to do how much are you going to fight for what you
want and and what are those choices you're going to make to to go one way or the other
how many feature scripts had you written prior to Borrego and how did this was the right one to
spend time with so I think this was the third feature script I had written the
first was the one I made when I was 17 and made this feature film instead of going to college
and then I wrote another one a few years after that with someone else and it was a cool story
and but nothing really came from it and then I went and stopped basically my own film career and
ran this film festival for young directors for seven eight years and then I started directing
commercials and so I got out of this path of of writing and you lose I think when I was doing the
festival especially I was doing very like producer type things I was raising money I was organizing
and I think if you stop being creative and writing and and using that muscle you lose that muscle and
I think that's what had happened and so I wasn't getting all these ideas anymore of like what I
was going to make and so I think what took it was my dad had told me this this real story of
of this invasive plant that had been growing out in the desert where he was working as a volunteer
botanist and that triggered something because it was like this this connection to him and i'd spend
my childhood actually spending a lot of time in the desert with my parents we would always go to
the desert and so the desert was this very special place to me and so I could almost see instantly
this the whole story put together and visualize it I knew it was going to be a compelling place
and so yeah I mean obviously it took a lot of time it wasn't like the first draft was okay
it's done it was several years of writing and revisioning and getting feedback from people
to make it a really strong film but I almost think if there was something about taking all
this time off and having some more life experience doing some other stuff that then gave me even more
power behind it to then be able to go and write something really strong when I when I had that
idea that I was really excited about how long did it take you to write the first draft oh it
probably took maybe six to seven months maybe for our first draft I mean I wasn't it was
I wasn't writing it every day or anything like that I mean it it it it probably took
longer than it would if I was gonna just sit down and do it now or something right but then
from there I probably spent another year or two refining it and doing a few more versions of it
maybe not quite that long but at some point in there I had started to get to get the idea
that I needed to do this proof of concept and so I think I was I was working on the proof of concept
why I always continue to refine the feature too and I mean you're still rewriting and changing
things even while you're filming and beyond so it you're never finished with it but it definitely
I think took many rounds of getting feedback and revisions to get it to a
place where it was ready to really share and be something you could send out to everyone.