QUESTION#1: What about your film excites you the most?: What excites me the most about WAITING FOR APHRODITE is seeing the audience’s reaction to the ending. I love talking with people about it.

QUESTION#2: What is it about your current movie that will influence your next film?: WAITING FOR APHRODITE is a calling card and proof of concept for THE TALE COLLECTOR, a feature film that we plan to shoot in 2026 from an Academy Awards Nicholl Fellowship Semi-Finalist screenplay about a retired high school English teacher and his neurodivergent neighbor. As with WFA, we will hire underserved filmmakers as PAs - in this case, developmentally and intellectually disabled individuals - who want to learn a pathway to the film industry.

QUESTION#3: When you’re shooting a film, do you think of time as something you capture or something you construct?: Time is the primary element in our film: the act of WAITING. And it is definitely something that we constructed. We show the importance of time to the lead character, Atticus, who sees it as a strict deadline, as opposed to his wife, Olivia, who sees it as an opportunity. In the end, we are all waiting for time to pass and for Aphrodite to show up so we can see what the passage of time has in store for us!

QUESTION#4: What’s a limitation you wish you had on your next shoot that would force you into making interesting creative decisions?: One interesting limitation I have been contemplating is “no flashbacks allowed.” THE TALE COLLECTOR script has several flashbacks to the main character’s younger days and his battle with depression, and it would be challenging to show those story-within-a-story moments through OBJECTS. A face torn from a photo, a retirement card signed by the main character’s students, an old bottle of anti-depressants. No reenacted flashback scenes. No “young versions” of the character. No cutaways to past events. It would also save money on casting younger actors and re-enacting some past events lol.

QUESTION#5: If a film shoot is like a living organism, which department do you think functions as its nervous system?: To me, the heart of storytelling is character - what do the protagonist and supporting characters want? How are they going to get it? What are the stakes? Will we root for them or against them? The actual STRUCTURE of a story is based on character, it’s how the film is built, and for that reason, the actors are the nervous system and their job is to send truth coursing through the body of the film moment by moment.

@cinemaedfilms, @richardstephenbell, @ldrcreativellc, @mattsimpkins_nyc

5Q's w/: Richard Stephen Bell "Waiting For Aphrodite" Director, Writer