Exclusive Interview: Elliot Tuttle, Reed Birney, and Kieron Moore Talk ‘Blue Film,’ Vulnerability, and Fearless Storytelling

There’s a rare kind of magic that happens when fearless writing, intentional direction, and transformative performances all meet at the exact same frequency. Blue Film is the kind of movie that reminds audiences why independent cinema remains such a vital space for storytelling, one where artists are willing to push boundaries, sit in discomfort, and trust audiences enough to wrestle with complicated emotions rather than offering easy answers. Through Elliot Tuttle’s assured direction and deeply introspective writing, alongside layered and emotionally raw performances from Reed Birney and Kieron Moore, the film becomes an intimate and psychologically charged exploration of vulnerability, control, and confession.

When fetish camboy Aaron Eagle (Moore) visits a client in exchange for $50,000, he discovers a masked man (Birney) armed with a camera and a series of increasingly probing questions. But when the man reveals a disturbing connection to Aaron’s past, the two slowly begin shedding the personas they’ve constructed around themselves.

Pop Culturalist was lucky enough to speak with Elliot Tuttle, Reed Birney, and Kieron Moore about the fearless honesty behind Blue Film, building trust through vulnerable storytelling, exploring the delicate push and pull between these characters, and how collaboration and emotional surrender shaped one of the year’s most evocative independent films.

PC: Elliot, Blue Film is a project that isn’t afraid to start difficult conversations and sit in uncomfortable spaces. There’s a real sense of fearlessness in the direction, the writing, and these performances. It pushes against what’s typically embraced by the industry, and even the journey of bringing it to the screen reflects that. As you began translating your journal entries and research into this narrative, what did you hope the project would reveal about your ethos as an artist? And how did you navigate staying committed to that vision, particularly with this being your feature-length debut as a writer-director?
Elliot: It was actually very easy to stay committed to the vision because there was very little creative overhead. Beyond that, though, I never approached the project from a place of fear. My mindset was always: if it’s bad, maybe no one ever has to see it. But I took inspiration from a lot of my favorite filmmakers, people who create without fear. I don’t think fear is any way to make something. The goal is to be as honest as possible, and you can’t really do that if you’re afraid of revealing yourself. So the entire point was honesty.

It’s funny because people often ask what conversations I hope the film sparks when audiences leave the theater, and honestly, it’s less about specific conversations. My greatest hope is that people walk away feeling moved or seen in some way, like someone took a meaningful peek inside of them. I want it to feel emotionally resonant and experiential.

As for the conversations, I’m sure those will happen too. What’s been fascinating is seeing the wide range of reactions from people after screenings. Everyone seems to take something different away from the film, and that’s been really interesting to witness.

PC: Reed, this role is such an interesting character study of desire, discovery, and control, and the way you move through those different tones and nuances allows those scenes to unfold in a really layered way. Both the writing and your performance resist easy answers. There’s also a real sense of self-awareness in Hank, where he understands what he’s capable of, which adds another dimension to the portrayal. How did you approach inhabiting this character without bias while still grounding both his past and present, and all of those contradictions?
Reed: That’s a very interesting question. Elliot recommended this incredible documentary, Pervert Park, which was on YouTube. It had been nominated for an Oscar a few years ago, and it gave me everything I needed to better understand who Hank was.

When I first read the script, I wanted to make sure that we didn’t present Hank as a predator; that he knew how dangerous he was and that he had lived his life appropriately. He didn’t have a computer full of child pornography because those individuals, even though they’re struggling with a disease as well, it becomes harder to get there with the character once you know that. I read something that said Hank is a monster, but is he monstrous? That’s a really interesting way to look at him.”

So I thought, “What if I were him?” He’s just a guy who’s got this terrible monkey on his back. How do you live your life? He’s paid the price in untold ways. It was really fascinating to me that he continued to live in that town and run into people every day who knew about him. He doesn’t run away. There were so many things in the script that fascinated me. It was an actor’s gift.

PC: Kieron, there’s also something so affecting about your performance. You’re navigating two sides of Alex/Aaron—the persona that he presents through his work, and the one that he holds onto privately, yet both feel so realized and uniquely him. There’s such a clear internal struggle, and you can always tell when he’s speaking as Aaron versus Alex, and vice versa. How did you find that balance between the two, so they could both exist within the same space while also feeling cohesive?
Kieron: Thank you for noticing that. That was such a clear desire when I took this on. My acting coach and I, as soon as we read it, we were like, “You get to play two characters here, and everything in between.” It’s a real question of authenticity and how much of ourselves we honestly bring into every encounter that we have.

There was such a clear vision, but there was never really a fixed decision made, which I thought was the best way to approach it. There was this looming thought I had going into filming about when these moments would come out. When Elliot and I had that conversation, he was so supportive. We settled on the idea that we know he has to come out and there have to be moments, but to let them find themselves naturally. That was really liberating. In the effort of trying to find him, it just felt like he was ever present.

As the movie starts to unravel, Aaron begins to unravel, and we start to notice that Alex has always been inside there. It just takes some cracking to get there. A lot of the time throughout the movie, it’s Alex looking at Aaron.

I also had the benefit of watching Reed deliver this incredible performance. As Kieron, I’m always inspired by actors who make me want to improve, and I was deeply moved watching him work. But those feelings were contradictory to what Aaron is feeling toward Hank. In suppressing what I was personally feeling, I got to partake in this dance of what suppression is and what it means.

I’m deeply grateful that people like yourself are seeing that journey of Alex trying to find his way through. I’m a massive fan of Peter Pan. My little boy is still in me. In many ways, it was an exorcism to explore that for myself.

Reed: Now that we’re talking about it, in the playing of it, it never felt like anything was calculated in terms of “this is Alex” and “this is Aaron.” It all came out so naturally and instinctively that sometimes the lines even got blurred, like, “Which one am I talking to?” Sometimes with actors, it feels like they’re thinking, “I’ve got this moment planned. Wait until you see what I do with this big thing,” but it never felt like any of that here. It felt like we were living in those scenes. It was magical.

Kieron: Elliot is also a dream director in helping us find that. We didn’t get a lot of takes and we were on a bit of a time crunch, but whenever we did multiple takes, we would always play it differently. Once one take was done, it was like, “Try something else.” It was never a decision; it was always an exploration.

As a younger actor, you’re thinking, “Can I do that? Do you need me to hit it a certain way?” And Elliot was always like, “No, we’ll constantly be able to find it.”

Reed was actually the first person to ever say this to me: “They can only use one take of it. They can’t use three at the same time, so just play.” It was such a deeply wonderful experience for me, and I’m so glad you could see that.

PC: It almost feels like a theater production, which I loved, where you’re watching these really intimate conversations between two characters unfold in such a compelling way. Elliot, that’s what really stood out to me—the intimacy and the strength of the writing. There’s this way that you pull audiences into this world from the very first frame, and you never quite know where the story is going to take you. But when you strip everything away, it really comes down to these two men having vulnerable conversations, which I imagine requires such a deep level of trust between you and the actors. How did you go about building that while also staying open to what they wanted to bring to these characters?
Elliot: Those are kind of the same thing. Trust is established by having done my homework. Then I also have to offer trust to them, too. Trust comes from having done the work, but still being open to what these guys have to say. I hired them for a reason. They’re both fantastic actors and artists. It would be stupid of me to be a dictator.

But trust is definitely earned, and I can only do that by talking through the text the best way I can, listening to all of their thoughts about it, and being receptive. All of those things build trust.

Reed: I don’t think we veered too far from your original vision, did we?

Elliot: No, we did not. But it was a very fun and illuminating process for me, even sitting down for the first table read we did in my old apartment and hearing the words in their mouths, then talking through ideas. Reed had a lot of ideas when it came to Hank. I feel like all of those things informed what the film became. I’m sure it’s a little different from the script I originally sent you guys, because I hired them for a reason.

Reed: My only contribution was that I was the only one in the room who knew what it was like to be older. [laughs] Elliot was only 24 when we shot this.

PC: Beautifully said. Kieron, you touched upon this already, but this is a question for both you and Reed. In many ways, this film feels like an intricate dance, navigating the complexities of this dynamic through a constant push and pull between control and vulnerability. I imagine each of you went into the project with such a clear sense of what you wanted to bring to these characters, but when you’re working opposite someone who’s pushing you creatively, how did your costars’ choices begin to shape or influence your own? How did you both go about exploring this dynamic individually while also building it collaboratively?
Kieron: We all really cared. We all wanted this to be great, whatever “great” means. We wanted it to be the best that it could be. We wanted each other to do the best work possible and to be as proud of that work as we could be.

I’ve always believed that the character you play is informed by the characters around you. The limits of Aaron and Alex are established by the limits of Hank. It’s that constant exchange and willingness to see how far you can take things.

The byproduct of making this movie is that I got to fall in love with both of these two. We’ve become such close friends. While we were filming these deeply challenging scenes for audiences, Reed and I were falling in love in a friendship sense. We were building this friendship fueled by laughter and delicacy, and that bled further and further into the characters’ journeys. There was this real surrender to each other.

I’m a big believer that if you want to be great, whatever that means to you, you have to try to make other people great too. There was never a moment with these two where they didn’t want me to be proud of my work.

Reed: As Hank, I fell madly in love with Aaron. I couldn’t wait to cross over the line into Aaron’s world. At the same time, Kieron and I were kind of madly in love with each other too. It felt like we would walk through this magic curtain and suddenly become these guys in this world. Because Aaron is so different from Kieron, it was remarkable to watch that switch happen.

Kieron: The long takes really allowed for that. I’d never had that opportunity before. The dialogue was so rich that you didn’t want to break anything. Credit to Elliot for writing this. He knew exactly what he wanted.

It became this magical experience where you didn’t want to hear the word “cut” because you could feel something happening. We got to live inside of it for thirteen very intense days, and I’m deeply proud of what we made.

Make sure to follow Elliot (Instagram) and Kieron (Instagram). Blue Film is out in select theaters now.