Geek Syndicate
INTERVIEW - Reboot’s Joe Kawasaki and Sidney Sherman
In contemporary Los Angeles, a young female hacker (Stat) awakens from unconsciousness to find an iPhone glued to her hand and a mysterious countdown ticking away on the display. Suffering from head trauma, and with little recollection of who she is or what is happening, Stat races against time to figure out what the code means, and what unknown event the pending zero-hour will bring. Set within a dystopian world that is a collision between technology and humanity, “Reboot” touches upon many of the current social and political concerns that arise from becoming more and more intertwined with the virtual. We caught up with Joe Kawasaki (Director) and Sidney Sherman(Producer) behind upcoming cyberpunk thriller Reboot. The guys reveal what the story is about, how they became involved with the project as well as some interesting marketing ideas and some tips behind achieving their funding goal on Kickstarter.
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GS: What attracted you to Reboot? Joe: When you pound your head against the wall enough times, something attractive usually falls out on paper eventually. What attracted me to it? It was a story that I could actually pitch in a couple of lines, people seemed to get the essence of it immediately, and it was somewhat “contained” for a cyberpunk genre idea, making it produceable. It was love at first draft from there. GS: Can you tell us a little bit about Reboot? Joe: “Reboot” is a fun little ride around a female hacker who wakes to find herself banged up in an apartment that is completely thrashed, and with an iPhone glued to her hand which has a ticking countdown and some code running on it. What the code and countdown are all about, why it’s glued to her hand, and how she ended up where she is, are what the film is about. GS: Joe, what was it about Reboot that drew you back to the world of narrative film?
Joe: I’ve always been drawn toward narrative all my life; I just haven’t listened to myself very well sometimes. That “Reboot” was a story that was essentially “contain