Ben Wade is a filmmaker and producer residing in Seattle, WA.
He is a heart forward cinephile, idea junkie, and archetypal addict. He is a process oriented and collaborative director and occasional writer.
Ben’s ultimate career goal is to adapt Philip K. Dick’s ‘Ubik’ into a dreamy, sci-fi feature a la Terry Gilliam’s ‘Brazil’. He is passionate about telling stories that reveal the complexity of the unconscious mind. Currently, he is developing several narrative projects.
Director Statement
I developed the idea for ‘Lazarus Motel’ while reflecting on my experience with suicidal ideation, an aspect of life that isn’t often spoken about. It isn’t shameful. We all choose to live –some of us simply entertain the choice with dedicated seriousness. In the early stages of writing, I began to wonder about dramatizing the ambivalence of choosing to live in the midst of great misery. I have always loved philosophy.
Around the time I began crafting the script, I read the following in Nietzsche’s ‘Twilight of the Idols’, “Saying Yes to life even in its strangest and hardest problems–that is what I called Dionysian… Not in order to be liberated from terror and pity–but in order to be oneself the eternal joy of becoming…” I drew inspiration from Nietzsche and the Dionysian Myth to establish the birth and ultimate rebirth of the protagonist and his deepest fantasy, to love again as he loved his son. The main characters are named in the credits after their archetypal counterparts and we attempted to subvert our audience with production design hints toward the myth and structure of our story. I hope the audience leaves my film feeling the depth and chaos that exists within each and every one of us.
Los Angeles feedback film festival 