This one's for Daniel. The inspiration for my main character

Part of EXILED is inspired by someone I knew quite well.

His name was Daniel Rice.

Our families spent holidays together. His father and mine were best friends. He was best friends with my brother.

Like many people in small towns across America, addiction slowly took hold of his life. Eventually, it took everything else too.

He died violently, publicly, and tragically — leaving behind a young son.

Years later, I still think about how quickly a human being can become reduced to headlines, rumors, police reports, or the worst night of their life.

A major part of EXILED is about that exact thing:

How communities judge.

How people are erased.

How suffering is ignored until it becomes tragedy.

How silence can become its own form of violence.

This film is fiction. Daniel is not the character.

But some of the grief, empathy, memory, and humanity behind the story absolutely comes from real life.

That’s part of why making this film means so much to me.

There’s something surreal about realizing we’ll be filming EXILED during the 20th anniversary of Daniel’s passing.

A person I grew up with.

Someone whose family shared special occasions with mine.

Someone who struggled, fell apart, and ultimately became another tragic headline. Someone who I was too young and naive to help at the time, yet still sometimes find reasons for guilt to set in.

Two decades later, I’m making a film partially shaped by the emotions that loss left behind.

Not a biography.

Not an exploitation piece.

A story about judgment, silence, exclusion, grief, and what happens when people stop seeing someone as human.

Life is strange sometimes.

What hurts us has a way of echoing through everything we create.

This one's for you Daniel.