The concept sounded interesting, at least from my friend’s description. I sat down towards the back of the theater for the Newport Beach Film Festival to see the award-winning documentary “Flight From Death.” The day before I had watched a slew of student films which left me totally uninspired. I needed something to reinstate my faith in young filmmakers. From the first utterance of “death” came instant satisfaction. This was going to be interesting! On comes the rag-tag posse of professors, mapping out death, violence, fear, the human psyche, all with earnest enthusiasm and concern for the subject and all in their entertainingly quirky manners. During the course of the film, my mind was racing. I was churning up instances where the “mortality” of the people involve effected the outcome. I was fully immersed, asking questions of myself, “Would I act the same?” Everything was pieced together so meticulously; It felt as though I was on a mission to find out why? But first I wanted to find out whom? Up walks Patrick Shen. He thanks everyone for attending and proceeds to modestly answer questions. He is the mild mannered Director of “Flight From Death.” Thoroughly enjoying what he does, Patrick has been in the film industry for 10 years. Don’t let that fool you, he is as gung-ho and excited as someone fresh to the scene. He loves reaching people and sharing with them what he has found in his life. Someone already wise beyond their years, yet willing absorb all life has to offer, Patrick found time to sit and talk with Over/Under: OU: Have you always been interested in film? P: I’ve been interested in film for about 15 years now. I started out as a musician, and then one point in high school I took this video production class thinking I would learn how to make videos so I could make a music video for my band at the time. I just totally fell in love with it! Around my junior year (of high school), around 16 or 17 is when I totally fell in love with it. OU: What was your bands name? P: Well I had a bunch. My first real band ever was a full on heavy metal band called Apocalypse. After that there was a band called Trinity and then another lame band called Poppy. Actually a lot of members (of Poppy) went on to do some pretty cool stuff, like the OC Super Tones and another guy named Adam Watts is blowing up right now. So I’m the loser of the bunch. (says sarcastically)

OU: What did you play? P: I sang for that band (Poppy), but I played guitar mostly. The band that had some measure of success was a band called Woodface, I was around 19 or 20. We did ok and were being courted by some labels, but nothing ever happened. OU: I had no idea! P: Yeah, film is my one passion and music is my other. I’ll get back into music one day. OU: What about documentaries? Creative and documentary (as a genre) are a little different. P: Yeah, I was always interested in feature films and not so much documentaries. I had this opportunity come up in 1999 to work on this documentary called “We Served With Pride” about the Chinese American involvement in World War II. I ended up doing that; I got to meet the president, who was Clinton at the time, and it did pretty well. The documentary got on PBS on the national schedule so it got national airing. It was really cool and made a little bit of money and that just sparked my interest in doing documentaries. Then I read Denial of Death and that really kicked me in the butt. OU: Did the book just hit? Did it just get inside you to where you felt you had to investigate it more? Why that book? subject? P: I think anybody that reads that book has a similar kind of reaction to it. It hits you really hard, right in the gut almost. It really has a way of altering the way you look at the world in a huge significant way. For me I’ve been interested in Philosophy, I was actually in school pursuing a degree in Philosophy and Psychology, so those existential concerns and ideas have been on my mind quite a bit. When I read the book, it just answered so many questions for me, and it seemed so logical. It didn’t require major leaps in judgment or faith. It had a huge impact on an existential sort of level. When I stumble on to things that really inspire me and move me, I have a tendency to share that with other people. That’s why I chose the documentary. OU: You worked at E! Entertainment. Do you think that was a good networking place or stepping-stone? P: It was a huge stepping-stone and a great place to network. I made a lot of good friends there and met a lot of good people. That is actually where I met the guy that did “We Serve with Pride.” We had mutual friends. That lead to a lot of good things, I learned a whole bunch about the TV industry. At the time I had been doing a lot of post-production work and corporate videos, so I didn’t have much exposure to the TV side of the business and production. Huge learning experience, met tons of people, got on TV a bunch of times on “Talk Soup!”

OU: What or who got you into Ernest Becker? P: You know, It was the book that got me interested in Ernest Becker and I found it totally at random. I was at E! at the time and I had some down time because I worked in the studio. We only worked when there were scheduled shows. There was a lot of down time. I spent a lot of that time searching the web and playing video games and what not. One time I was doing a search on barnesandnoble.com and just looked up death. I had an interest in it and thought I’d look up some books and Denial of Death is one of the first books that popped up. Months later I was walking through this bargain book store and there it was, so I just bought it. It seemed interesting. It was a totally random occurrence. That book just sparked this whole journey. OU: That’s cool that it wasn’t anyone in particular that got you into the book, that it was just you! P: That happens to me a lot. These books kind of find me, and they really speak to me in really significant ways. I am really fortunate in that way. OU: Patrick’s Book Club? P: No one would read any of them; it might be fun to do anyway… OU: If you made a movie about them they would! OU: Is there anything from “Flight from Death” that sticks with you, that you can identify with? Maybe what one of the professors said? Did any one of them identify with you more than the others? P: Yeah, definitely. Sam Keen, the trapeze guy, he’s one of my heroes right now. I am reading all his books right now. Before I embarked on making this film I was in school pursuing my philosophy degree, very much after answers. When I met Sam Keen, he’s this guy that has been through the academic world, he got advanced degrees at Harvard and Stanford, was a writer for Psychology Today, wrote a thousand book, super accomplished. Yet he’s realized that it takes a lot more than these academic pursuits to figure out what his life is all about. That is just kind of one component of what life is about, there is this whole experiential element to living life that science can’t necessarily explain or teach us all about. He’s just a very wise man. I got a very cool vibe and energy. He’s very relaxed and seemed to just embrace the mysteriousness of what it means to be alive. Despite the fact that we can’t get out all the answers he’s very happy. He’s found this very meaningful life. He impacted me, but there are so many people that impacted me in different ways;

Sam Keen more than the others. OU: What was your biggest obstacle? P: The biggest obstacle is probably the same as with any indie film-maker is budget. I wanted this thing to be shot on 70mm, Baraka style! I wanted this big crew, I wanted to shoot on film, and I wanted to travel to all these locations and it just wasn’t possible. That was a huge challenge because we had to delve into this very academic and heavy subject and make it accessible and cinematic to people. Not just have it be talking heads the whole time. It is tough to do that on a budget. OU: What other projects can we see from you soon? P: I have some insane projects in the works. There is one that I started before “Flight from Death” called “Men with out a Country.” It’s a documentary that is sort of a sequel to “We Served with Pride,” my first ever documentary, about the Chinese Americans who served in the Civil War. That will be out on TV. Another one that I am excited about is “8-bit.” There is a scene of 8-bit musicians out there. What they do is get Gameboys, Atari 2600s, Commador 64s, and they tap into the sound chips and they compose and perform music with those very limited sounds. It’s really amazing! OU: Anything music wise? P: Naw… Ever since my last band I have been pretty actively writing though, and I have an albums worth of material that I would like to record someday… For more information about Flight From Death and Patrick Shen, go to: www.flightfromdeath.com www.transcendtv.com