Prior to the film, I was also privileged enough to be able to interview the director Tim Sutton.
Can you tell me how this project came about in the first place?
Tim Sutton: Sure. Well when I along with lots of people in America saw the Aurora massacre, the Cinemark massacre, it felt horrible for all those people and as an American I felt horrible for this crisis in our country, this gun control crisis, but as a movie-goer and a filmmaker, I felt the theater experience was now forever corrupted because it’s not a safe space anymore. So what I decided to do years later was make a movie based on that, but not about death, not about violence but about life and how people live their lives.
How long after the tragedy did you start on this?
Sutton: Well that was in 2012 and we’re in 2016 now, I wrote the script in 2015. So it took me a few years to get to it.
Did the process go smoothly?
Well financing a movie like this is very challenging and I had key financers walk away when I wouldn’t change the script in one way or the other. But the actual production was a sublime. It was a fantastic experience. Small group of people all working together towards one common goal.
Do you think it was the subject matter that drove some financers away?
I think it was the subject matter and the treatment of the subject matter. I could’ve made a big shoot em up movie where Joaquin Phoenix plays the bad guy and I would have gotten financed in a minute but the way I wanted to do it, quiet, subtle way with non factors, and not telling the audience what to think made certain financers feel like it was a little more risky.
Does it mean more knowing that you stuck to your guns on this?
Yea man, I stand by every frame of the movie. The movie is really great.
