The seed of this movie's conception was Robert's idea to cut to a contextually unrelated epic space battle after a regular scene involving normal characters. But what story would call for such a bizarre transition? It was this question that led to us brainstorming the basic idea of the movie, where we examine a family that fights a lot. Our goal was to expose the absurdity of the statements people make in the heat of intense arguments by contrasting them with various other situations.

First, the mom complains about having to clean other people's mud tracks, which is contrasted with a space battle between Earth and Mars. When I first saw this scene, I wasn't sure how well the two sides read. "Planet Earth" is seen very briefly on a piece of falling debris, and "Planet Mars" zooms by on the side of a massive ship (the comedic timing of which is superb). But then, it isn't absolutely essential for the viewer to know who is fighting, as long as they understand they're looking at some kind of war. The fact that it happens to be a bizarre space battle in the future helps to immediately widen the audience's perspective to the scale we were shooting for. The identities of the different sides remains a detail of wonderful easter eggian value. I also think it is awesome that Earth is losing.

Then, the father complains about how important it is that the wife make the right kind of side salad for the dinner they are serving his boss, which is contrasted with a caveman discovering his own reflection. I'll let that one speak for itself.

And finally, the daughter complains about how unfair it is that the father is making her date the boss's son (which, to be fair, is actually kinda fucked up), contrasted with an adventurer getting buried in a collapsing tomb after having saved the world. I like the unspoken implications that this patriarch's family is meaningless to him in his zeal to impress his boss. I don't entirely remember how conscious we were of that while writing it, but it really works to the film's advantage. The narrative specifics of the adventurer cutaway are not clear, which I tried to address in the original script. I wanted there to be an evil alien mummy who would taunt the adventurer, giving the viewers a clue as to what was happening, and I believe I had the adventurer defeating him by deflecting his "omega beams" back at him using a series of mirrors (which were typically used as a light source in ancient tombs). James and Robert truncated it to what we see on the screen. I'm not sure what their exact motivations were for doing so, but I will admit that the finished version matches the rhythm of the other cutaways better than a monster with dialogue would have. Vague though it might be, it still hits all the points it's supposed to.

I think someone told me once that some people thought this movie moved a little slow, and I think that has to do with the title cards, but they are essential to the story. Overall, I think this movie shows a masterful use of juxtaposition and balance, and its success is entirely up to whoever happens to be watching it. My brother and I argue a lot, as do James and Robert, which is probably why we find it so amusing and worthy of artistic exploration.

Here is what the Dastolis have to say about A Wind to Shake the Stars:

JAMES:

"So about half the people who watch A Wind to Shake the Stars love it, and the other half violently hate it. I don't know why that is."

ROBERT:

"I think the effect that gets the most reaction out of people in A Wind to Shake the Stars is not the space battle, but the picture falling at the end. This was of course, the easiest thing to do, but perhaps is so effective because it is more connected to the characters."

An interesting side note about this project is that I stopped shaving for months in order to have a thick caveman beard. I kept getting very short haircuts, however, because I knew I'd be wearing a caveman wig when we shot this. So during those months, while we were waiting for James and Robert to get their new camera, I played the insane Admiral Rian in Robert's third Guardians adaptation, Attack of the Gigas. The combination of close-cropped hair and wildly thick beard worked perfect for that, which made it completely okay that you can't even see my face in this movie.