CURRENT PROJECT
SURVIVING MYSELF is a short thriller about a drug-addict, haunted by guilt, desperately struggling to survive a relapse after he refuses to accept his part in his lover's fatal overdose. DONATE TO OUR INDIEGOGO CAMPAIGN The characters in this story are based on real people, including the writer. Many of these people have not made it back into sobriety. This is a way to honor what addicts go through as they transition into recovery. If even one person could see this film and choose to live, then all of the pain they’ve endured will have been worth it. INDIEGOGO Campaign: https://igg.me/at/survivingmyself/x#/ IG: @survivingmyselffilm
as a writer
A wise mentor once told Juan, that if he didn't like the material that currently exists for actors like him then he should write his own material. Juan has taken that to heart and as a private poet, avid reader, and actor language has firmly integrated itself into Juan's life in a way that has helped him express some of the more difficult stories lying within him. These stories have started coming out as screenplays.
Currently Juan has a screenplay, SURVIVING MYSELF, in pre-production with FilmStage a production company co-founded by himself and Arjun Dhawan, the director of SURVIVING MYSELF. As a company, they are working on a few other shorts: HIM, a futuristic comedy about the lengths we’ll go to escape ourselves in virtual reality, STRANDED, a drama dealing with a Mormon teen desperate to keep his life of sex and men a secret in the wake of a violent sexual assault, and PINNING DOWN THE ISSUES, a comedy about an anti-gay right wing influencer forced to wrestles with his queerness.
SURVIVING MYSELF is a short thriller about a drug-addict tortured by his past, and it touches on the ways self-hatred can manifest and destroy lives. This is a screenplay written for addicts by an addict. So often in film, we’ve seen people struggle with substances, and then, if we’re lucky, we see them sitting in rehab, ‘healing and happy’… But how? How did they stand the pain of self-hatred long enough to get there? This film will show us how to do that! It’s a roadmap to enduring your feelings in active addiction. Feelings cannot kill you, and facing them is when the healing begins. The writer, Juan Danner, co-founded FilmStage productions with his friend and director, Arjun Dhawan. Over the last year, they have worked on many iterations, workshopping with different casts. In attempts to secure bigger funds and a better team, they launched an Indiegogo campaign last month to raise 10% of the proposed budget. Please donate to our campaign. (link above) At its core, this story is designed to help those in the grips of addiction. This is a life and death battle, and the project strives to help people survive. Indiegogo: https://igg.me/at/survivingmyself/x/31094279#/ Instagram: @survivingmyselffilm