DL:Marketing is very important; without it how would people see your film? I’ve always thought of film festivals as the best marketing tool for an independent film. I think it is a rare independent project that succeeds without showing at film festivals. DL:We had about 30 shoot days, on average, 8-hour days per shoot day. I don’t like to work long days, and I don’t expect anyone else to.

What is the source of the idea? How did the story develop from the idea? And how did the story evolve into a screenplay? Why do this story? Do you have a writing process?

DL:Paolo Soleri was the first to agree to be in the film, and the first interview was with him, and the first footage was of Arcosanti. David Licata (DL): A Life’s Work is a documentary that asks the question. What’s it like to dedicate your life to work that won’t be completed in your lifetime? Compounding all this is sleeplessness. For month after month, Cusk cannot sleep through the night. Soon the “muddled nights began to attain an insomniac clarity. My insides grew gritty, my nerves sharp…I no longer slept in the intervals, but merely rested silently like some legendary figure, itinerant, doughty, and far from home. The reservoir of sleep I had accumulated through my life had run dry. I was living off air and adrenalin. Mercury ran through my veins."

Financing: Grants from the Puffin Foundation, the Yip Harburg Foundation, Indiegogo fundraiser, and self. What are your personal experiences putting on all these hats/responsibilities (simultaneously)? Tell us about story, writing, and production? Frankly, you are a self-obsessed bore: the embodiment of the Me! Me! Me! attitude which you so resent in small children. And everything those children say or do is - in your mind - really about you. Sooner or later, you end up in family therapy, because it has never occurred to you that it might be an idea to simply bring children up to be happy, or to consider happiness as an option for yourself ... Talk about navel-gazing." How important is marketing? Talk about the festival tour? Do you think a project can make a dent without it nowadays? First of all there was a letter, from a writer friend I had sent a copy to. Be prepared, she said: your book is going to make people very angry.

When did you form your production company – and what was the original motivation for its formation? David Licata (DL):I’m David Licata. I’m a filmmaker and a writer of fiction and nonfiction. I live on the Upper West Side of New York City. It might not occur to you that, just because it's a horrific experience doesn't make it interesting. If you had a baby, you did so because you wanted one. If you are suffering sleep deprivation so severe you're hallucinating, that was your choice." David Licata (DL):Over the 12 years of the shoot, two cinematographers, Andy Bowley and Wolfgang Held, coincidentally shot the same amount of footage each, about 50 hours, and the difference between them was something like 10 minutes. It’s because of the two of them that the film began and kept going. Wolfgang and I had worked on my previous film, Tango Octogenario, and when I shared the idea with him, he was intrigued and said he’d love to be involved. Andy’s enthusiasm for and positivity in the project sustained me and gave me the confidence to keep going, even after we finished production, maybe especially after production. Without them, I may have never finished shooting. DL:I have a short documentary I’d like to make. The pandemic is trying to make sure the film never gets made.