I came up with the idea for “The Morning Guy” on the flight back from The Cannes Film Festival last year. I was looking for a film I could shoot on digital video, in my own house, without spending a lot of money. It started out as a simple gag, but ended up as an allegorical story about being married. The Morning Guy is like a lot of married guys I know in Los Angeles. We’re underemployed creative professionals with wives who have straight jobs and put up with us. The film is a satirical cautionary tale about driving away your spouse by relentlessly doing your own thing.

I don’t believe in the Dogme school of filmmaking; it seems a little lazy to me. My philosophy is what I call “House Power” where you use lights, but not more than a few; you shoot DVCam, but keep it on a tripod and in focus; you have a cast and crew, but not so many people that they can’t fit around one table at lunch; you use professionals, but don’t impose on them so much that they feel the need to be paid. (By the way, the cast and crew are mostly pulled from the above-mentioned pool of under-employed creative professionals.) In short, you use your grown up film making skills with the resources of a typical film student.