Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead have created three of the best indie sci-fi movies of the past few years—Resolution, Springand Endlessness. In their latest movie, SynchronizedA paramedic played by Anthony Mackie discovers a designer drug that allows him to travel back in time.
“We’re talking about, ‘What if there was a substance that made you go through time the way Einstein described? ”” Benson said in Episode 437 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy audio file. “That is to say, there is no distinction between past, present and future, and indeed everything happens simultaneously, and time is more like a frozen river than a flowing river, and This substance – this drug – will allow you to experience that.”
The film is filled with mood and color, much of it taken from the New Orleans setting. Moorhead says it’s important to place the film in a place that is instantly recognizable in its various historical periods.
“With New Orleans, there is nothing like it,” he said. “It has this strange French and Spanish colonial history, as well as very American – jazz and civil rights. Just a huge history very, very, very specific to New Orleans. It occupies this great piece of real estate in the American psyche. “
Benson says that time-travel films tend to romanticize the past, focusing on manners and fashion rather than health care or social issues. “When you look at things like Back to the Future, it’s a great movie, but it really shines the 1950s,” he said. “It’s something that has run through our media and culture for a long time.”
Moorhead hopes that Synchronized will help combat that kind of reflective nostalgia and give the viewer a greater appreciation for the present. “Absolutely fine in any individual product to gloss over something or romanticize it,” he says. “It is a choice. It is not a moral failure of any individual product. But what we want to do is test the other side of that.”
Listen to the full interview with Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead in Episode 437 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Justin Benson in independent films:
“One day we will have a movie that everyone knows about the day it comes out because it has a $20 million marketing budget, because that’s how you do it. But that’s also really scary, because it’s better to be really good. It’s better than great, because that’s what the kids will be talking about at school on Monday. It’s actually pretty funny, because you’re going to have a bit of a pass as an indie filmmaker, because if it doesn’t make an impact, people will say, ‘Oh, that’s what happens. with indie movies.’ In a way, you just really excel at your best movie, and if something comes and goes, it doesn’t really hurt you. It just happens. But if there’s a lot of marketing behind a bad movie, it’s a threatening prospect.”
Aaron Moorhead on the characters:
“Some of the most exciting times for us while we were on set were when our characters talked to each other about something that wasn’t in the film’s diary, and you’d be shocked at what happened. How rare that is. . And by the way, the things they talk about informing the plot afterwards, informing their characters, and pushing the movie away, it’s just that in that exact moment, they don’t discuss what to do with time travel pill. There is a general wisdom in writing that if the dialogue does not go along [the plot], then you can also trim it. But if you cut it, you get something lifeless, and you don’t understand these people. Because you can only express yourself so much through action. Our primary means of expressing ourselves as human beings is through the way we communicate with others. “
Aaron Moorhead on the pandemic:
“We might be able to attend a local movie screening [of Synchronic] in LA, where I believe there were two or three drives, because we wanted to see what it looked like. But that’s funny driving experience there is no way to ‘direct’. Most of them don’t even let you stand on top of your car and speak to the audience or anything like that. So being there just means you’re in your own car and watching the movie you’ve seen a billion times. So that’s the thing. We’ll go, because it’s our premiere, but there’s no functionality to actually meet at the drive-in, because there’s no direct aspect to it. There is no direct Q&A. “
Aaron Moorhead on randonauts:
“[Random numbers] coming from a computer, and it’s very complicated how they got to them, but you can still find out how they came from that randomness. But there is a way to get actual randomness, and that is to measure the quantum field, because the quantum field is indeed random. And so [randonauts] can take these measurements and get truly random numbers that are really impossible to predict in the future. They take those numbers and turn them into coordinates, and they go to those coordinates, no matter how hard it is to get there, and in doing so they get out of their definite tunnel, because no What world would they have gone to if they hadn’t followed those numbers. “
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