Butterfly on a Wheel is a love letter to our authentic self, to our own personal truth. The script began initially as a journal entry while I was coming out of the most difficult year of my life. I asked myself “ok, start at the beginning, what is good about your life?”. The answer was without question sitting in my grandmother’s lap while she played Puff the Magic Dragon for me on piano as a child. Her singing into my ear, like a secret. It was my introduction to music, which would become a life long passion, and the warmest memory I have of feeling seen and unconditionally loved.

That journal entry became the opening scene for the movie.

Although semi-autobiographical, the movie is deeply personal to me in its exploration of mental health issues, insecurity and anxiety and the search for our own true authentic voice. That question, that search has taken me most of my life to answer. The human condition is an enduring focus of mine, and with this movie I wanted to explore the theme of how we all manage to “get in our own way”, and what does it take to get past that very thing. We all struggle, we all doubt ourselves, and with the advent of social media human beings can now compare our internal reality to other peoples external reality, which is often a sensationalized highlight reel. A recipe ripe for the creation of crippling self-doubt.