Meet Dan Bush | Writer, Director, Producer – Film, TV and Fiction Podcasts

We had the good fortune of connecting with Dan Bush and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Dan, how has your work-life balance changed over time?

Your Life is a work of art that you are creating while you live.” That’s what Francis Ford Coppola said last night where I attended a screening of The Cotton Club at The Plaza Theater in Atlanta. It was his 85th birthday. Coppola is a hero of mine because his life and films have been an incredible inspiration to me throughout mine.

Reflecting on my journey, the cultivation of a work-life balance was a slow evolution. From the outset, I was dead-set on pursuing a career in filmmaking no matter what— by any means. It was a passion ignited during in high school. Making videos for school projects was the only thing I was interested in. Cut to a few years later— In film school I immersed myself in every facet of the craft—production design, cinematography, writing, directing, and editing. Over two decades, I worked hard to gain experience by exploring diverse roles on film sets, all the well continuing to make short films. I was honing skills and nurturing my ideas.

By 2016, I’d made a dozen short films and a few features, including ‘The Signal’ (2007), (which I co-wrote and co-directed with David Bruckner and Jacob Gentry). It earned recognition at Sundance. That was followed by ‘The Reconstruction of William Zero’ (2014) and ‘The Dark Red’ (2019). In those years after The Signal, I works my ass off. I was determined to succeed at a career as a director agains all odds. I developed projects with talents like Bradley Cooper, Mila Jovovich, and Paul Bettany, and whenever theses projects stalled, I would set out to make a no-budget movie instead of wait. Despite encountering setbacks, I remained undeterred, channeling these obstacles into opportunities for creative expression.

However, the production of ‘The Vault’ (2017) marked a turning point. Despite securing partial funding and attracting talent like James Franco, the journey was fraught with challenges—from budget constraints to conflicting creative visions. The strain took a toll, and with the birth of my son, Levi – I was struggling to star above water. At one point, I remember going about 40 hours without sleep. I thought I was having a heart attack more than once. I was 45. I’d spent my life taking artistic risks at the expense of all else. I had no savings, and no solid career, yet I had a beautiful family who depended on me.

This was a turning point. Faced with the stark reality of sacrificing my well-being and family for high risk artistic pursuits, I confronted the need for change.

This realization prompted a recalibration of my approach to my craft, my passion, my dream: storytelling. I resolved to prioritize collaboration with like-minded, confident professionals and projects where I would retain creative control and at least some ownership. Transitioning to entrepreneurship offered newfound autonomy and flexibility, allowing me to balance professional commitments with family responsibilities — sometimes seamlessly.

So today, my goals are different. It’s all still a work in progress, but today, the goal is for my work and personal life to intertwine harmoniously. Success in one depends completely on the other, and I see my primary job as maintaining the health of both. Operating my own business demands unwavering dedication, yet it affords me the freedom to nurture both professional ambitions and familial bonds. For the first time in my life, I recognize the symbiotic relationship between the two realms, I strive to maintain equilibrium, knowing that success in either domain enriches the other.

To do this I have shifted my focus from a by-any-means-necessary zeal to a more simple practice of patience, commitment, and consistency. A little focus every day is a more successful strategy for me than going for broke. Slow and steady wins the race.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.

I am fascinated with the power of moving images and sound to trigger new states of consciousness: pivotal “Ahh-ha!” moments in the mind of the audience. Movies and fiction podcasts (as I have found out on recent projects) have the power to light up regions of the brain in the same way a poem or a riddle can. I like to work with a kind of dream-logic in my stories. By playing with time and space and with metaphor, we connect dots that exist beyond the narrative. Film does not have to be linear, dialogue-driven or even theatrical. It’s a medium that can function more like dance or abstract art, at times, for a more profound or even transcendent experience. A narrative does not have to be literary or logical for us to comprehend it. In fact, if it is more lyrical or poetic, more surreal or impressionistic, it can transform our perception in lasting and meaningful ways. I love movies that are mind-bending: Jacob’s Ladder (2001), or Rashamon, for example.

I also love when stories are loaded with spectacle. Shakespeare is bloody as hell– full of murder, suicide, deceit, body humor, sordid love affairs– but Shakespeare is also brimming with poetry and a constant consideration of what it means to be a human being. Whether the genre is sci-fi, comedy, horror, drama, or action, the key for me is that the tension be built out of a concern for the characters. My starting point for all creative decisions is the question, ‘whom do I want to align the audience with and what is that character’s point of view?’ My job as a storyteller is to align the audience with the characters so that they experience a transformation with them.

But again, the stories that inspire me break convention. I’ve always been interested in experimenting with story structure. For instance, The Reconstruction of William Zero is a sci-fi movie I made about clones. So I thought, If all of Western storytelling is rooted in the idea of catharsis—meaning that the audience should identify with the main character and experience the tragedy or comedy of the play through that character—and if cloning is a technology that will inevitably destroy our age-old ideas about ‘the self’—then my movie needed to also disrupt that conventional cathartic structure. So, William Zero became an experiment in transferring an audience’s allegiance to multiple versions of the main character.

These experiments in story structure can lead to great ‘Ahh-ha!’ moments for the audience. Sometimes the setup takes longer, but if done right, the payoff hits on a deeper level– like the zen-satisfaction you get when solving a riddle. There is an ‘Ahh-ha!’ moment. With movies, you do it with images and sound. With fiction podcasts, you do it with sound design and score alone. As the legendary editor and sound designer, Walter Murch said, the greatest thing a film can do is provoke an image or sensation that is not on the screen but is elicited from the mind of the audience.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?

In my years living in Atlanta, I have seen the town evolve. We’ve lost a lot of cultural gems to developers, but despite this, culturally and historically significant places still thrive. The brand, “Atlanta Influences Everything,” is spot on, and this city has become more culturally relevant and interconnected, every year I’ve lived here. Here are a few of my favorite places that are distinctively ATL.

The Plaza Theater: Christopher Escobar has been the owner of the Plaza Theatre since 2017. Recently he signed a new 25-year lease and began a major renovation to the historic theater. The Plaza Theater is Atlanta’s hub for cinema, hosts the Atlanta Film Festival, and fosters Atlanta’s diverse and growing indie-film community.

The Beltline: The Atlanta BeltLine is one of the largest, most wide-ranging urban redevelopment programs in the United States. It’s a network of public parks, and multi-use trails, along a historic 22-mile railroad corridor. It’s the best way to experience the city and all of the connected intown neighborhoods,

Dad’s Garage: Founded in 1995, Dad’s Garage is an award-winning non-profit theatre company that brings in over 30,000 people a year at our new Ezzard Street home in Atlanta’s historic Old Fourth Ward. Definitely catch a show!

And then — my favorite places to eat? Lloyds for beers and pizza, and A Mano for an Italian mom-and-pop trattorie found in the heart of Atlanta

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?

I’m gonna go with two here.

First, I’d like to take a moment to shine a spotlight on Ben Lovett. Lovett is an American composer and songwriter whose diverse range of original scores include Hulu’s recent reimagining of Clive Barker’s iconic Hellraiser, Netflix’s The Ritual, and Searchlight Pictures’ The Night House from director David Bruckner; Jim Cummings’ tragicomedy The Wolf of Snow Hollow from Orion Pictures; Emma Tammi’s avant-garde western The Wind.
Lovett and I have collaborated for over two decades on multiple short films and features and his music has set the tone and style for my brand of storytelling. A film score not only sets the emotive landscape of the world we build, it transforms the viewer’s experience and informs everything that is happening. The score indicates subconsciously the depth, and psychology, and direction of the story, all without the audience being conscious of it. The score can hypnotize, transfix, and transcend the image.
Over the years my working relationship with Ben has evolved in a really effective and innovative way. Rather than using a temporary score for the first cut of the movie or fiction podcast, which Lovett would then replace and perhaps replicate or try to emulate the spirit and tone of the “temp” music to make any given scene work, Ben and I developed a different approach. He creates a rough score bank for each project, based on his reading of the script and on our conversations, and I then use this library to temp-score the piece. This is no small task on Lovett’s part, but it sets up a movie that is built of its own creative DNA (rather than getting infected with disjointed fragments and musical ideas from other compositions (and Lovett doesn’t have to try and match Hanz Zimmer for instance). I am also not infected with the residue — the germs of other works, and so the transition to the final score feels a thousand times more organic. Of course, Lovett pours back over the score after hearing my selects, and he edits, embellishes, rearranges, etc, but the world is already built and the continuity is there.

Also, Lovett knows better than anyone the psychology of score and he blurs the lines between score and sound design, which led us to a new way of working. Lovett will take sounds out of context or distort them for a more impressionistic effect — The musicality of a church bell in the distance, or the impression of a helicopter passing overhead, for instance, can imply more world than is seen. These effects can resonate in the mix and charge a pivotal moment in the story with psychological resonance and metaphor.

Lovett has helped me build so many worlds. When you find someone you trust – you stick with them. I am grateful for our creative brilliance and for our friendship. There are few people I’ve collaborated with who care about the work more. With Lovett, there is no ego; there is just a mutual love for the story and the characters.

Second, I’d like to give a shout-out to another esteemed creative collaborator, and unsung hero, Conal Byrne.

The first time I met Conal was backstage at an experimental 24-hour, one-act play competition at the Horizon Theater in L5P — in Atlanta. Conal had been cast to act in one of the pieces, and I was there to direct another. He was on fire. Brimming with ideas and vision. His energy was electric and his brilliance was inspiring. At the time I was grieving the loss of a dear loved one, and struggling to make sense of things, Conal was radiating this creative energy and it was infectious. He was also hilarious, and I remember smiling wide for the first time since forever.

That was over two decades ago, and since then Conal has been a co-creator, a kindred spirit, and an unwavering friend.

Together, we’ve penned multiple screenplays, brought numerous short films to life, and embarked on three feature projects, with me directing and Conal delivering captivating performances. His multifaceted talent extends beyond the realms of writing and acting; Conal is a creative genius and an exceptionally gifted musician. His ability to effortlessly transition between artistic pursuits is awe-inspiring, and his ideas are next-level.

What also sets Conal apart is his remarkable business acumen. How such a creative spirit can so easily maneuver in the corporate world with such confidence and insight is an enigma to me– but I’ve had the privilege of witnessing his meteoric rise in the media business, culminating in his current role as CEO of the iHeart Digital Audio Group. Under Conal’s leadership, iHeartMedia is now the No. 1 podcast publisher globally and Conal’s strategic vision, coupled with his innate leadership qualities, has propelled him to the pinnacle of success in the media industry.

His achievements are a testament to his incredible drive and dedication, but also to a kind of creative fearlessness. Despite his illustrious career, Conal remains grounded, ever-ready to lend a helping hand, and always eager to innovate and make something new.

So shout out to Conal Byrne. It’s an honor to collaborate with someone of Conal’s caliber. He’s always pushing the envelope, and I look forward to many more creative endeavors together.

Website: psychopiapictures.com

Instagram: danbush101

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-bush-21b31815/