Louisiana filmmaker Zack Godshall is a Lafayette native and current screenwriter-in-residence at LSU. He has new film, entitled "Lord Byron," that's heading to the Sundance Film Festival.

He joins WRKF's Ross Young to talk about his work and Louisiana filmmaking.

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Photo credit: Hilary Bronwyn Gayle Filmmaker Zack Godshall

Young: Zack, tell me briefly, what is your new film about?

Godshall: "Lord Byron" is about a middle-aged guy who lives with his ex-wife and her kids and her boyfriend. And he's just kind of loafing through life and not really sure how he wants to live the second half of his life. So it's kind of a comic look at this struggle that he goes through and a search for, I guess you could say, peace and quiet.

Young: One of the unique things about this film as I was reading about it is that most of the cast has very limited or no film experience, including the lead role. What was your motivation in bringing in those actors and actresses?

Godshall: In my first film, "Low and Behold," which I made in New Orleans just after Katrina, we included a lot of people in the film who weren't actors. And it was the first time I had ever done that, and it was pretty exciting. But the baseline of the film was led by three really trained actors that we brought in.

For this time around, I thought it would be pretty interesting just to go totally with untrained actors. For the most part that was the case. We had a couple people who had some smaller roles who had acted before, but the lead had never been in a film before. He actually cuts hair for a living in Lafayette.

It was pretty fun to work with people who haven't worked in the film industry ever before. In fact, I think I was the only one who had ever made a film before. To me, it was a really fresh and fun way to work. Nobody knew the right way to do it, and nobody knew the wrong way to do it. So we were really free and creative.

Young: Another significant note about this movie is that it features an entirely Louisiana-based cast and crew. What's the significance for you in bringing in those people to put this whole movie together?

Godshall: Well, it wasn't the intention at the beginning, but we didn't think about it like that. In fact, someone else told me that after we finished. But we didn't try to go anywhere else for any kind of cast. We just wanted to cast it all around Lafayette. I wrote it with a friend of mine, Ross Brewbacher. Together, we cast the film with most of the cast from around Lafayette. A couple of people from Baton Rouge actually came in to our auditions and ended up being in the film.

We just wanted to make a movie down here in Louisiana with just ourselves and not wait to get the green light from an investor or any kind of company from elsewhere. We just wanted to do it, and we did it pretty quickly. And as it turns out, it's the first all-Louisiana film, cast and crew to get into the Sundance Film Festival. That's pretty exciting. I'm from Lafayette, and so is Ross. I think everybody feels like it's a pretty special moment.

Young: What do you feel like is lying ahead for filmmakers from Louisiana? There's the whole "Hollywood South" mentality now with Louisiana, but for filmmakers from here, what do you feel is in the future for them?

Godshall: I think this is a great kind of case study, "Lord Byron." We didn't outsource anything; everything was done here with people from here. We made most of the movie in Lafayette. We went to New Orleans for a few finishing things, and we did the final mastering of the sound in New Orleans. But otherwise, it was all very much with people we knew or people that weren't too far away.

I think that's a great moment. It's exciting to know you can do it yourself; you can make these things yourself as long as you find people that you can collaborate with and that share the creative vision that you have. Then you can get together and make something that other people might like.

Young: Zack Godshall is the writer, director and producer of "Lord Byron," which premieres January 24th at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Zack, thanks for talking to me.

Godshall: Alright, thanks for having me.

To find more information about Zack Godshall and "Lord Byron," visit http://lordbyronfilm.com