#1: Can you describe your movie and why somebody should see it?

What we get from those we love the most isn’t always something we should want to have.

#2: What do you want the Borrego Springs Film Festival audience to know about your film that isn’t obvious from its title?

This would be related to my answer to Question #1. I still feel really ambivalent about what Wes, the protagonist, does at the end of this film. His father’s legacy to him is violence and Wes has to decide how he will respond in a world that can be so casually brutal. So, in that sense, the title is ironic.

#3: What is your movie making background?  Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in a small town in Texas and, as a kid, I was a dreamer who always had his head in the clouds—which led inevitably to filmmaking. I’ve made several short films and I am currently working on my first feature project (more on that below). I went to film school at Columbia University in New York where I earned my MFA. I am currently a film professor at Fresno State.

#4: What was the biggest lesson learned in getting your film made?

That shooting period films needn’t be as daunting as it seems! Inheritance is set in the early 1930s and the story is based on a feature-length script I’ve been working on for some time. I was always intimated by the feature version of this story because it’s period and I thought it’d be too difficult to make without an enormous budget. But with a dedicated production design team—and some careful location scouting, you can pull it off.

I made this film as part of the Summer Film Project at Grand Valley State University, where I was teaching film at the time. We had professionals in the key roles (director, producer, cinematographer, sound) with students in all the other crew positions. I feel like a project made in a circumstance like that inherently becomes even more collaborative than a typical film set because you have to create space for the kids to learn and take ownership of the project and their role in it. It was a challenge for me as a director to open myself to that, especially with a project that is as personal to me as this one is. But it also is a great reminder of how just how much filmmaking relies on so many different people contributing the best of their talents and abilities to get the job done.

#5: What does the future hold for your film and you?

As I mentioned above, this film is based on a feature-length project. As I write, I am currently involved in a massive revision of the script for that film. My plan is to move forward with preproduction in 2020 and (hopefully!) shoot it in the very near future.