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

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• Living and being isolated in the desert
• The Definite Chief Aim - a concept by Napolean Hill through way of Mitch Horowitz
• Grieving the death of his girlfriend Jean Guo
• Gaining momentum through commercial success
• Understanding purpose
• Working through failures
• Accepting ourselves
• Being magick
• Balancing out the need for control
• Changing negative perspectives
• “Hollywood has this ability to arrest you in this psychosis of delusions” - Saman Kesh
• The gift of an existential crisis
• Power in analyzing dreams
• Functioning under depression
• Saman’s “Zoom” call analogy
• Martial arts

Books Referenced:

• “Fierce Intimacy: Standing Up to One Another with Love” by Terry Real

Artists Mentioned:

• The Daniels (Directing Duo)
• Martin Scorsese (Director)
• Jonah Hill (Actor)
• Joyce Carol Oates (Writer)

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