Riley Stearns grew up in Pflugerville, TX, a suburb of Austin. His feature debut FAULTS premiered at SXSW in 2014 and went on to play festivals around the world. THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE, his second feature, also premiered at SXSW in 2017. The film was released by Bleecker Street domestically and Universal Pictures internationally. DUAL is Stearns’ third feature as writer/director and first as a producer. When not making films you can find Stearns on the mats training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Topics Discussed In This Episode:
- Riley’s origin story
- Riley’s first memories of growing up
- The memory retention of “highly sensitive people”
- Riley’s past life as a musician
- How Riley started writing short films and feature films
- Riley initially finding his voice through mimicking other people’s writing styles
- When Saman and Riley met at SXSW in 2013
- Where the initial idea of Dual came from
- How Riley creates the tone in his films
- Riley’s time working as a staff writer for TV shows
- Riley speaks about legacy
- Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
- Logistics for getting films made
Artists Mentioned:
- Aaron Paul (Actor)
- Karen Gillan (Actor)
- Jim Jarmusch (Director)
- Yorgos Lanthimos (Director)
- Aaron Stewart-Ahn (Filmmaker)
- Jack Nicholson (Actor)
Watch the video version of the podcast here
artistdecoded.com
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