Last week, I visited SkyArt in Chicago to film one of the final sequences in the film. After speaking to various adults about the issues of racism, I decided it would be good to get perspectives from the future of America. So, I spent three days with elementary school students, discussing what makes a story and how they could tell their experiences in comics and film. The children were quick to discuss Trump, immigration, climate change and what they would say to the barber w

Today's filming didn't go exactly as planned. We drove out to Palmdale, attached the camera to the hood of the car, and it was far from perfect. I'd have changed it if we had a chance, but some rancher creeped us out by lurking near the road, so we just bailed. I told Meina we could try again in another location next Tuesday. "Tuesday's with Pirooz," I said in a text. "lol," her text said. I figure we can film these every Tuesday for the next month, until we get something hal

It's funny how one incident can change your life. I had no idea I was that much different, until that barber in Delaware refused to cut my hair because of my ethnicity when I was nine years old. Thereafter, my life was changed. I was afraid to get my haircut, see a doctor, apply for a job, or meet someone new. Any time I met someone new, I knew I had the potential to be treated "differently", which is really a nice way of saying "experiencing a racially-charged incident". Thi

Today we shot the final images for the dream sequences. A friend brought her two children to represent myself at the age the incident happened. The idea is that we'd see these images in slow motion alongside other beauty shots, such as the American landscape, etc., to represent the "dream portions" of the film and help us transition from one section of the film to the next. Directing children is a bit of an art form in and of itself, because you have to be the most free with

Las Vegas was nice. We hit a Denny's on the way. That's a good way to start. Aaron and I had pancakes. They weren't as good as pancakes in LA, but they weren't bad. Then, we kept on all the way to Vegas and went straight to Noah Cicero. He talked about how him and I met and the weird serendipity of friendships and circles that came about after I agreed to make a film of his novella The Human War. "I met Loren and Jake, and I went to Korea, and now I'm here. That wouldn't have