Mike Cahill once considered being a biologist.

Here is that interview.

So, you werent paranoid that you wouldnt have fundamentalists stirred up or controversy around this movie?

I think its sincerely asking these questions.

How did you felt connection with this narrative?

I really admire scientists.

I wish I were a scientist.

I was kicked out of biology freshman year.

And I was like, Why do artists draw it like this?

Why dont you draw a different way?

Can you see it under a microscope?

Theyre like, No, no.

This is what the behavior suggests it is.

And the professors like See me after class.

And hes like, Get the fuck out of biology.

Youre going to be here for 12 years.

So he didnt kick me out, but he encouraged me to pursue something else [Laughs].

And then I had a little knack for economics, which I love.

I thought it was fun and interesting.

But I didnt love it like filmmaking, but filmmaking was my hobby.

Im like, What are they going to think?

Are they going to be into it?

You made scientists fuckable!

[Laughs] And I thought that was great.

The one who speaks to her other self on the television and holds up the space strawberries.

That character is based off her.

Youve also made science fiction affordable again.

There are no aliens.

Otherwise, two-year-old effects are like lame, right?

But it can last forever if its an idea, and it doesnt need any money behind it.

Was that a conscious parallel?

It was very different from theGatsbyone.

But this was as if a ghost from the void [had come].

So, I wanted to recreate that feeling, I guess.

And originally, he didnt find her in India through a billboard.

That was an idea that Alex Orlovsky, our producer, came up with to give him more agency.

…We live in a world now where there are databases of eyes.

Like hundreds of millions of eyes are catalogued by iris biometric databases.

And in India, the third act of the movie takes place in India, thats true.

So, I wanted to tell a science fiction story that uses current technology and was romantic.

Are you a Michael Crichton fan?

Because he likes to mix real science with fictional science.

Like the taking out the [DNA] from the amber?

I like when youre not entirely positive if its true or not.

What we propose in this film is not something you’ve got the option to disprove.

And along the water there are all these rocks.

And the tourists all taking photographs of the ruins, and on the rocks theres dinosaur footprints.

And you’re able to go to this place and see the ruins and the dinosaur footprints.

They came and went without finding dinosaurs.

And I was trying to think, Well what are our dinosaur footprints?

Well, there are eyes.

What is it we look at, that is right under our nose, and we dont realize?

That we take for granted.

Do you believe reincarnation is a possibility?

…I dont know.

I mean mathematically, energy is preserved.

Scientifically speaking, nothing is destroyed.

If something is destroyed, it manifests mass energy equivalence, like E=mc2.

Whether the ego or the id, or the sense of self perseveres, I dont know.

Could you talk about the casting of this movie?

Well, I didnt really know that I was going to make the movie until I met Michael Pitt.

And I told him the story ofI Origins, and he said that is really cool.

Id love to hear more about that one day.

And that kind of set off a wildfire in my head to write it.

How do you bring in the scientific and spiritual elements at the same time?

But thats what science fiction writers do, except for Jules Verne, who was completely prophetic.

So, its an extrapolation about where it might end up.

I Originsis now playing in theaters in select cities.

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