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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