Q. What inspired you to create this film?
A. Fear. Fear of death. The promise of scientific acheivement seems to be the ultimate elimination of death, doesn't it? Perhaps that's a fool's quest. Perhaps that's a Utopian dream made possible.
Q. Would you say your fears projected your own personality onto Michael, the main character?
A. Most definitely. Only for him, the experiment becomes a sort of private Hell. That's sort of the irony of the story. The solution to death becomes precisely the thing that drives him to suicide.
Q. Did making this film alter your preception of human cloning?
A. Quite. Originally, the possibility seemed extremely attractive. Then as I realised that the destruction of death meant the loss of much of my perceived meaning to life, it seemed far more reproachable. Without death, what would life then mean? That is, in a way, a more terrifying future. An infinite life seems a certain kind of torture, to me. It's a life with no escape.
Q. How long did the shooting of A Reasonable Hypothesis take?
A. Two weeks total. That including a week in the hospital location, two days in the church, and two days at other locations. It took entire days just to move all of our equipment and to pre-rig and light our locations, in some instances. But we were able to complete the entire production in fourteen days. Then we all went and got very pissed [drunk].
Q. How long had the idea for this film been in your head, before you realised it on camera?
A. Actually, I got the idea in the late 1990's, around the time Dolly the sheep was cloned. Originally, it was to be a short story. It wasn't until I entered film school that I decided it would make an interesting movie.
Q. How did you go about researching for the film?
A. It wasn't hard. Medical papers, articles about the possibilities, and such were all over the Internet since Dolly.
Time Magazine put out a cover article on human cloning during the last week we were shooting [Laughs]. THAT was surreal. I also took an excellent biomedical ethics class at NYU.
Q. I hear there's a bit of controversy surrounding the film, do you know anything about that?
A. Yeah, it's strange, you know. You make a film, and before it's even out, people are opposed to it. Just the idea that someone is making a film about human cloning at all, some people just find completely repellent. I thought this nation was supposed to be founded upon freedom of speech. Of course, I suppose that means that they are entitled to their opinions, too. I don't know. It's not like I'm completely glorifying the practice or anything. If anything, the film paints a rather negative portrait of human cloning. I don't know. You can't please everyone, I guess.
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