WET DREAMS

Rainy Seattle provides a dream backdrop for mathematician-turned-filmmaker Samuel Rufus Williams’ Butterfly Dreaming

By Denise Gibbs

The ancient Chinese philosopher Chuang Tzu once dreamed he was a butterfly, completely forgetting about the man he was. When he awoke he felt he was Chuang Tzu again but wondered which was true: Chuang Tzu dreaming of changing into a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming of changing into Chuang Tzu.

Mathematician-turned-filmmaker Samuel Rufus Williams got the idea for his new Butterfly Dreaming from a dream as well. “It was a very well-structured dream,” he says. “I was trying to cover my tracks from something I did or did not do. I realized at that point that it was a dream.”

In the surreal thriller set in Seattle, the line between dreams and reality is severely blurred for mathematician Rob Pollack after the tragic death of his wife. The themes seem appropriate for LA-based Williams, whose path to becoming a director also reads like a strange fantasy. 

 

“The theme of the film is about not knowing whether or not you are dreaming. I wanted some way to give it a dreamy reality and the Northwest with its rainy season seemed to be the solution.”

 

Williams studied philosophy as an undergrad in Sydney, Australia along with photography and mathematics, then went on to Oxford and Harvard where he earned his PhD in mathematics. His first paid film project was to produce a short promotional piece for a new undergraduate core class for the mathematics department at Harvard. This led to an internship with legendary Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Errol Morris.

Following his experience on a professional film set with Morris, Williams moved to LA with his wife where he wrote and read screenplays for three years while also creating a network of filmmakers and teaching mathematics at UCLA.

“A lot of mathematics is about visualizing how space and other items fit together,” Williams says. “Lighting, staging and storytelling are all important items in filmmaking that are akin to mathematics.” He also found that he loved the problem solving factors of making a film. “It’s about narrowing it down, that makes it easier to solve and you come up with things to solve your problems.”

Seattle provided the perfect setting for the film’s dream-like world.

“The theme of the film is about not knowing whether or not you are dreaming—which part of your experience is a dream and which part is reality,” Williams says. “I wanted some way to give it a dreamy reality and the Northwest with its rainy season seemed to be the solution.”

Local location scout Peter Allen helped Williams realize the vision he saw in his mind. In one instance, he asked Allen for a location for a scene in a car garage. 

“I explained what I was thinking, which was pretty rudimentary, with mesh and razor wire on the top,” Williams said. “He said, this may sound a little odd but in Seattle it rains a lot, and the kids’ playgrounds in the schools, they have an indoor section. And I know this one up on Queen Anne Hill that has a pretty cool look.”

“It looks more like a car yard than any car yard you’ve ever seen.” Williams adds. “It was not the boring old car yard with razor wire on it, which was certainly the vision I originally had.”

Principal photography for Butterfly Dreaming wrapped in fall 2006. “It’s been so long,” he says. “I guess that is the travails of low-budget filmmaking.”

“We had a great time up in Seattle. And I feel it shows up in the film,” Williams says. “We didn’t feature the Space Needle, but if felt very much like a Seattle movie to me. It has that mood, especially in the exterior shots. There is this beautiful soft light with the cloud cover. It has a sort of dreaminess to it.”

 

“A lot of mathematics is about visualizing how space and other items fit together,” Williams says. “Lighting, staging, and storytelling are all akin to mathematics.”

 

Samuel Rufus Williams