"When I was 16, my father went to the moon..."
That's how the new movie "Don't Come Back From the Moon" begins. It's a new major motion picture starring James Franco and Rashida Jones and is based on Iowa author Dean Bakopoulos's first novel Please Don't Come Back From the Moon.
In both the book and the film, fathers disappear, leaving families to wonder what happened to them.
"The huge majority of us live paycheck to paycheck and are a few bad turns away from economic ruin," says Bakopoulos. "I really wanted to capture that. Economic uncertainty is a spiritual condition. When you're worried about debt, and you're worried about income, and you're worried about how you're going to feed your family, it's a spiritual problem. And I really wanted to capture that."
"Now, there are cell phones, Facetime, co-parenting and shared custody. Before that, if divorce happened, it was like people would disappear."
During this Talk of Iowa interview, Bakopoulos talks with Charity Nebbe about the film. Director Bruce Thierry Cheung also joins the conversation.
