1) Can you talk briefly about your background, and how you first got interested in filmmaking?

When I was a kid I thought I wanted to be an artist because I liked getting in trouble with spray paint, but in high school I realized I was just a really shit painter. I’d always loved film and on a whim applied to this program in California called CSSSA which is like a state-run summer school for art kids. While there I saw a lot of formative films like Le Bonheur and Mysterious Skin and was pushed to make personal work for the first time. Something clicked and I dyed my hair green, gave myself this terrible faux hawk, and went home knowing I wanted to make movies. 

2) What was the initial idea for this project and how did it evolve from there?

Z.H. sent me the Más Bowls short story when I was 16 and I knew I wanted to make it but had no idea how. Five years later I was preparing my senior year film at college and had cast this former child star to be in it. Long story short there was a handjob scene she hadn’t told her agent about or something and it all fell apart at the last minute. Más Bowls had been kicking around in the back of my head as something of a passion project and I realized that it was time to try to make it. 

3) What was the biggest challenge in making this film? And the easiest part?

When we found the motel we wanted to shoot in they told us that no one was allowed to film there. I was in love with it though, so we rented a room. They had these weird rules about only two people allowed in a room at a time? So I took Gen’s car and made trips back and forth from school to the motel bringing one crew member at a time with each carrying a piece of equipment disguised as luggage. We taped the blinds shut and stayed inside for eight hours until we finished and then repeated the whole charade again. 

The easiest thing was just letting the people around me do what they’re so good at. Everyone who worked on this film I’m truly indebted to. Grace and Andrew were especially great to collaborate on these characters with. Plus they got in a motel bed covered in cigarette burns for me. 

 4) What’s a film you’ve seen recently, new or old, that you really loved and why?

I just saw Mia-Hansen Løve’s Things To Come which, like most of her work, blew me away. I loved that it’s a story about a woman dealing with gravity-shifting events but never veers into melodrama and instead explores her lived experience with a subtle approach focused on interior moments and minutia.  

5) What’s next for you?

I’m currently in my first year of the Columbia MFA program and am working on a new short film as well as writing my first feature about a queer teenager with a compulsive eating disorder in health-centric Southern California. I’ve also been trying to find a good used couch with my roommates for our new apartment.

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