I guess I was a little bit tired of so much intensity. I was a bit overwhelmed about it and I wanted to lighten it up a little bit — to speak of things that really I care about, but in the upside-down side of it, and to approach them differently and be able to laugh. I want to have that luxury once in my life.

I promise you, when the agents at CAA hear the phrase "gay mathematician," dollar signs flash before their eyes. "Man, that's going to be a huge hit movie." No, that's not what they say when they hear that. [laughs] They told me it was career suicide.



They were like, "Please don't write this movie, no one will ever make this movie, no one will ever buy this movie, no one will ever see this movie. It would be career suicide to write this." And I was like, "But I don't even really have a career. How can I ruin something I don't really even have?" We can joke about that now, because we have this movie and we really love it.

So it was never a thought in my mind that this movie would be about anything other than jazz drumming, or that, for example, the character of Fletcher, the conductor character, would be softened for commercial purposes. I purposefully wrote this movie so I wouldn't have to make those compromises.

I was very, very engaged, and I felt very emotional; I think I cried at the end of it, and I was shocked by how emotional it was, how resonant the story felt to me. Right away I thought, Wow, I want to do this.

There's a lot of joy and fun and wit when you work with Wes, almost like when you were a little boy and there's a good friend that comes home, and the first thing you want to do is take him into your room so you can show him all the toys you have and share with him all your fantasies. It's exactly the same with Wes.

I knew we were making something special because there was a kind of courage about the whole thing. The crew was really excited about the way I was working, that it wasn't just doing it by numbers. But the reason why I was so free with it — framing, with the acting, with obliqueness — the whole thing was under the assumption that the film has absolutely no commercial hope at all.



That it's a Polish film with unknown actors that was fantastically liberating and we can just get away with anything. The idea of Oscars and all that was the last thing on our minds, it felt like the opposite of an Oscar-winning film. I knew it would be a film that I might enjoy, and a lot of my friends, but that it might actually connect with audiences and people [would] pay to buy tickets — I wasn't sure about that at all. Miracles happen occasionally. 

I am a survivor of suicide. I lost my adolescent son, who was bipolar, and I actually made a film about it at the time. And what I found is that the best prevention for suicide is a discussion — an open, loud, discussion. Not whispering, not keeping it in the dark, not feeling like it's a shame upon the family or a question of character.



People get sick with cancer, and sometimes they live and sometimes they die; I would compare someone with PTSD, bipolar illness, or whatever else it is, with a serious physical illness. This is real, and for my part, I'll take any opportunity I can to remind people that suicide can and should be talked about. That's the one solid way we know to contribute to prevention.

Before I went to Hong Kong I had a lot of meetings with lawyers. Some said it was risky to go, and The Washing Post advised me not to, but then I had lawyers who said, "Obviously you're acting as a journalist." Although, one lawyer said, "If you bring a camera it makes it more risky" — because of the threat of subpoenaing my material.



So I edited everything in Berlin and we took extreme measures to keep the footage secure and encrypted, with the concern that either the material would be subpoenaed, or worse, that they could try to raid our editing room and take everything. We protected it all, even the outtakes, with encryption and strong pass phrases.