Film Courage: You have a film about religion that you will direct but you say it's not
faith-based? Long Beach City College Film Professor (LBCC) Elias Daughdrill/Filmmaker: Yes, it's not a faith-based film but it's a film about religion yeah
I guess religion is a subject matter but
faith-based means to me that that it's a movie it would be a movie that's trying
to get the audience to believe in its specific religious doctrine because
that's what most facebait most faith-based films do and
so it's not that it's it's it's not a film that's not trying to proselytize at
all you know I grew up I grew up in that world I grew up an evangelical Christian
and so naturally it's something that I find interesting and I could tell a
specific story about it I thought so that's why I got interested or decided
to make it and how has it been to argue to have the film hasn't been released
yet right almost almost I'm in the midst of color and sound design and all that
sort of stuff but we're almost there when you were creating the protagonist
for the film did you start with a problem or a dilemma that needed to be
solved yeah I guess I did I mean I I knew I wanted to make a film in the
world and I knew I wanted to design it around a scenario where a character who
is devout goes through a crisis a character who's only seen or understood
the world in one way is then put into a situation where it kind of disrupts
their worldview. I knew that was it the circumstances of how we got there or
what place they were put in I didn't know but I knew that's the situation
that I wanted I knew what the character was like and what kind of situation I
went to put them in what kind of how I wanted to change their context I guess
how long did it take you to write the script I wrote the first script of the
first draft of the script ten years ago Wow so this idea it's called faith or
anything was that the original title okay
had been probably swirling around and you all your life maybe yeah I mean well
yeah when you grow up grow up that way I mean it's gonna inform your your outlook
and certainly inform what you think of as could be interesting narrative
material and that I had finished the the documentary and done the festival thing
with it and but new I was like I want to do I want to do narrative so I sat down
and I had a couple other scripts but I didn't either one I'm worried they're
good and he could and I want to write something new and so I sat down and
wrote something new and that's what came out and then it was a process of okay
that's the first draft of the script I wrote a couple more drafts of the script
over the next year year and a half and how am I gonna try to make it and so
what I did which I still recommend to people I just recommend the students
what I did was I just started looking for producers who worked in the
independent art space you know they made like arty American movies cheaply not
things that you know I wasn't sending to people who were making fifteen million
dollars the movies I'm making I'm standard the people are making movies
for two million dollars or less and to see if it not just that but also films
that I liked films that I responded to the idea being if I'm gonna get the
money to make this I need to make it cheaply enough because it would be my
first feature and also I you know you don't want to bark up spend your time
barking up the wrong tree right I'm not gonna send it to people who are making
low-budget thrillers or low-budget horror films because it's just not like
nothing wrong with those kinds of films is is not my Avenue and so I sent it to
lots of people mostly you get ignored that's kind of the nature of the thing
most time people just don't respond some nice not for us rejections and then Mike
Ryan was the producer out in New York and I sent it to him specifically
because he had produced two movies one called junebug with Amy Adams that I
just loved while two movies that I love junebug and
then another movie Kelly Reichert second movie old joy he was a producer on both
of those films and I loved them and they were in the same style that I wanted to
make this film in and he responded to the material so but then off we went but
from that period it was still another six years or so before we actually
started to make the movie it just takes that long we wrote more drafts got into
some won this thing out in New York where we got some money people to read
it Sony Pictures Classics level of the LA
but it still took forever finally we were able to do it
was that the whole ten-year journey or was there times when you weren't sure
that this was a topic you want to explore you always know I'm stubborn as
all hell so when I said this is a movie I said
this isn't me you know I like I don't know there's maybe this is complete
arrogance but I feel like I understand what makes a movie and so that I would
be interested in I guess then you know sometimes people may not think it's
movie but for me I was like this position movie and so I was gonna stick
to it and until I got it made now there were certainly plenty of times when I
was like oh this is never gonna happen I don't know how this is ever gonna come
together but yeah it wasn't it wasn't gonna stop you know I think that that's
like when you are in a low-budget space and you don't have access to all kinds
of money or connections or whatever you don't have an agency that's backing you
that's gonna you know find the money for you the one thing you have is your like
your perseverance or your stubbornness is nobody else you're Sisyphus pushing
the rock up the hill and nobody's gonna push it up with you so you're just gonna
keep doing it and it's gonna roll back over on you a bunch of times but that's
that's the one commodity that I could bring that would be the thing that would
in shirt the movies gonna get made I couldn't bring the money I couldn't
bring all the connections I can bring any of that stuff but I could bring that
like I was gonna keep pushing the rock so yeah and then we ultimately were able
to do it we were able to be able to put the money together and find some actors
and shoot the film and Brian Geraghty plays the protagonist
yeah Brian places protagonist Brian is um Brian's an extraordinary actor he was
an extraordinary actor it was I've worked with I worked with good actors
before he's the best actor I've ever worked with it was it was kind of an
amazing thing to watch cuz he's a very the characters of the characters going
through really rough time and it's a very quiet film that's a very eating has
to be so so subtle but in that subtlety showing a lot of pain they're exhibiting
a lot of pain and and Brian is funny and he's gregarious and he's talkative and
he's jokes and he's a lot of fun on set and to watch somebody who can switch
from that from joking around and playing and having a lot of fun to all of a
sudden he's in this moment with a character who's having to go through
some grief of luncheon grief is extraordinary thing to watch it's like
the greatest gift to just be able to point your camera at somebody who can do
that and do it so well it was it was extraordinary so you're in the editing
phases of it yeah the pictures locked with it so we're in color and sound and
everything yeah we're done cutting so 10 years 10 years yeah yeah it's but it's
not an uncommon story you know there's all kinds of people who have that story
of it took me you know 7 8 9 10 years to finally get a movie made I mean it was
going on a long time and and you know at one point you know I realized from the
documentary until I don't know I was probably a couple years into my
relationship with Mike as we were you know rewriting the film and
and but I'm still feeling like I'm gonna be able to make this and I look up and
go wow I haven't made anything I haven't made anything it was it had been I don't
know four five years that I hadn't you know actually directed I just written
stuff you know and so then I just started making shorts again like I have
to keep learning I like to keep trying to become a better filmmaker if I'm
gonna make a feature film I need to make more films and so I made I mean a series
of shorts over the course of three years and that was really it was really great
for me it's like get back into the get back into the habit of making stuff and
get better at it I I think you know you ask this question about your film
watcher or filmmaker one of the things that I think that for me makes me want
to keep doing it is it feels like a net that I could never quite crack is it so
there's so much to do it's so hard to make to make something that's really
good that really flies it's a never gonna quite get this right and so you're
just I'm just gonna keep trying to get it right and so doing it over and over
again you know in just in short form like I remember somebody said that to a
lot of done with short films when I was younger
somebody said that and I'm done with short films I'm going on to a feature
and I thought well yeah that's true we should you should just move on you
should graduate and now like know like just whatever you can make if you can
just make youtube videos make youtube videos because you'll learn doing that
you know after we finished this thing you know I've got a couple of other
bigger things that I'd like to do but there it's not well maybe they would
happen right away but I kind of doubt it and if they don't I'll set up a couple
of shorts and make some more shorts you know because it will i'll keep learning
by making that's and the crucial thing that I figured out
while I was doing that
you