VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Daniel Dorr & Writer-Director Dillon Tucker On Making SXSW Film ‘Pure O,’ Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Pure O follows the story of Cooper (Daniel Dorr), an aspiring screenwriter who struggles with a lesser-known form of OCD known as Pure O. Writer and director Dillon Tucker played Brian in the film.

The film is set to premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, on March 13 in the Narrative Feature competition.

In an exclusive interview with uInterview founder Erik Meers, Tucker explained why he wanted to write and direct the story.

“Well, it’s a very semi-autobiographical story about my own life and I wrote it pretty quickly because I didn’t want to write about my life probably like eight years ago or something like that and I didn’t want to write it when I was going through things, I wanted to wait until I was passed everything and processed it, but I didn’t want to wait until I kind of couldn’t access it or touch it,” Tucker said.

“So I wanted to wait till I was right in that sweet spot and had another film I was working on going into the pandemic and when the pandemic happened, that put the kibosh on that so I turned to something that was a little bit more in my backyard, something more insular or something more personal. So I wrote this script pretty quickly by my standards and came together,” Tucker continued. “I think it’s going to be two years from when I put the first word to page to when we premiere at South By Southwest next week, so in our little indie world I think that’s a pretty fast turnaround.”

Dorr and Tucker then went on to talk about their favorite scene in the film.

“There’s a scene later on in the film with my character works at a rehab facility and he is someone who is white-knuckling his diagnosis and his mental health issues,” Dorr began. “And I’m speaking to a character named Brandon who is played by Jeff Baker, we’re always butting heads and there’s a kind of a very cathartic scene that happens in the film where, as I’m trying to sort of give him a final opportunity to sort of take responsibility for his life and for his disease, I’m sort of starting to realize that I can’t do this on my own either and it’s through this vulnerability that we’re able to heal and to move past the anger and rage and sadness. It’s just so well written and it was such a great scene to do and I still think about it sometimes.”

“Honestly, that was the exact same scene I was thinking about,” Tucker agreed. “You know, I wrote the scripts and edited the film as well so I’ve just sat with the material so much that I find now, every time I watch the film, a new scene or a new moment kind of sits out with me but that is particularly that monologue in that scene is just really – it’s really that kind of the crux of the theme of the movie and it’s all leading to that sort of like sea change for the character in terms of his realization and the way Daniel and Jeffrey play that scene – I get chills, every time I get like goosebumps.”