Written and directed by Jarrett Lee Conaway and produced by Graciela Muriada-del Toro, Foolishly Seeking True Love packs a truly improbable amount of style, wit and detail into three short, sharp minutes. Conway, 27, hails from Virginia Beach, Virginia and arrived in Los Angeles to pursue his Masters in film production at the University of Southern California (a commitment he balanced with his selection for Steven Spielberg's 2007 reality show On the Lot.) Muraida-del Toro (who also managed to co-produce the short For the Last Sixth Time) grew up in San Antonio, Texas, graduated from NYU and worked in the advertising industry creating commercials before heading to Los Angeles. Together, the pair relied on everything from a friend's random casting tip to the wardrobe stylist's canine connections, to realize their vision.

EP: How did the two of you end up working together on Foolishly Seeking True Love?

G: Jarrett and I had met several times at a lot of the social events and we just kind of clicked... I had read Jarrett's script, I really enjoyed it and I was hoping to be on his group.

J: It was funny because when I wrote the script I was convinced it was just the worst thing I had ever written and I was just crying about it literally because it was so painful as I wrote it. And then Graciela said, "It's amazing," and I was like, "It's not even going to get selected so we won't get to work together anyway." I didn't even show up when they announced who was going to get to direct them... and then she texted me like, "Your script got selected!"

EP: Why were you so pessimistic about it?

J: When we went in for the pitch, they asked me where the script came from and I said, "Well, it's hard to date in L.A.," and they like looked at me and they laughed and I said, "No, seriously." That whole notion of true love and love at first sight, it just seems in the city people act like that's a naive thing, like it can't happen. But I kind of wanted to have something that was kind of like this magical realism, kind of a piece about love in modern cities.

EP: Graciela, as a producer, what were the challenges you saw within the script?

G: When I first read a script my gut instinct is always, is this a great story? What can be made out of this? And as soon as I read it I knew it was going to be something that could be made into something beautiful and amazing and tell a really unique story from Jarrett's perspective. But in terms of challenges, the first drafts of the script were significantly longer, we had to cut out a couple of scenes just based on timing and also logistics of, you know, shooting days and talent, so that was some of the stuff we worked through in some of the development sessions with Film Independent.

EP: Your two lead actors who play Handsome and Belle, Jason Stoll and Angela Sarafyan, are fantastic and have such an interesting look. How did you work together on the casting?

J: I try to go for interesting people with an interesting look and I kind of knew that I wanted the anti-romantic lead... like someone you want to stare at it but almost because they're like a cartoon character. Jason came in and I knew from his headshot... he was just absolutely incredible and we cast him pretty quickly and then from there it was about finding the right girl that would have a similar kind of unconventional beauty and quirkiness to her. We didn't find her actually in auditions, we had several people try but nobody really quite had it and then a friend of mine... suggested a girl that she had just directed in a TV pilot called Angela Sarafyan.

EP: Jarrett, a lot of people are going to pick up on a Wes Anderson influence in the film.

J: I went into the pitch basically telling them that this was kind of like Amelie and it also had the tone of the Royal Tenenbaums, so a lot of my visual references were coming from that from the beginning. That little montage with Handsome is kind of Rushmore like, and we were trying to make sure that we got away with doing it without it feeling—we [wanted] it to be an homage, but we [didn't] want it to be a copy.

EP: Graciela, let's talk about the number of locations because this was by far the most ambitious film in terms of the number of places you shot.

G: We ended up getting a really great Film L.A. grid permit for Downtown Los Angeles, which made all of our exterior Downtown shots so much easier because if a location... wasn't working we could quickly pick up our very barebones crew and just find something similar... The amount of locations was definitely something that we were concerned about at the beginning. The nice thing is that right off the bat one of the things we decided was to try to center this whole story around the bar.

EP: Which bar is that?

G: That's Association in Downtown L.A. It's a gorgeous bar. We shot at Cole's [Originators of the French Dip] also, which was a huge last minute coincidence. We happened to see [it] next door to Association when we were location scouting... and our editor, who happens to live in an upstairs loft, was able to go and talk to the owner and allow us to shoot there too.

EP: In addition to all these locations you've got a bloodhound and a bunch of horses. Walk me through that nightmare.

G: This is a very visually driven film and so we didn't want to make any compromises... we had talked about different options, you know, worse-case scenario, do we use a fake horse? Do we use some other kind of dog? And of course Jarrett let me know for sure that that wasn't going to fly... We were able... to get a horse from the Burbank Stables, Griffith Park horse rentals. They were extremely accommodating because they knew that we were a very low budget project so they gave us a very, very cheap rate and they had one of their assistant handlers there the whole time. The dog was actually [through] a family member of our wardrobe stylist.

EP: Jarrett, let's talk about the French New Wave element. What was your approach there?

J: Having gone to film school I'd had a class on [François] Truffaut and things like that so you know, I was aware of the kind of French New Wave aesthetic but I rejected parts of it ... it's funny because Amelie was one of my stronger influences for the film and that film is [influenced by] French New Wave and it even has inserts of French New Wave in it... [director Jean-Pierre] Jeunet was influenced by French New Wave but he didn't copy, he did his own thing, which was what I was trying to do.

EP: The film certainly expands the idea of how much you can achieve in three minutes.

G: When people read [a script] like this, you get a lot of favors and you get a lot of people excited about the film who want to be a part of it, and that makes it so much easier to produce because people are really excited and want to make into the best project possible.

At thirty three years old, Jonathan Levine might seem a tad young to be serving as a mentor; he is, after all, only five years older than his Project:Involve fellow. But as Levine explains, it is precisely his youth that enables him to provide counsel from the perspective of someone who, just a few short years ago, was navigating the same nerve wracking path out of film school. It was at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival that Levine, the writer and director of The Wackness, suddenly moved up the hot young filmmakers list. Currently at work on both television and film writing projects, Levine hopes his next directorial outing will be an R-rated comedy entitled The Sitter.

EP: Your Project:Involve fellow is Jarrett Lee Conaway the writer and director of Foolishly Seeking True Love. How have the two of you got on?

JL: We've got along great and it's been really interesting for me because I kind of had a very similar experience: I went to film school and I remember when I was a graduate from film school and I had my short and I was really proud of it but I was also incredibly scared... you know, you go from being kind of a big man on campus to just being terrified of what the real world's going to throw at you. Especially in this time with this economy, it's just a really scary time to be coming out. So it's been thrilling for me to be able to sort of help him navigate that.

EP: You're the youngest mentor that I've spoken to. What do you offer that someone who's ten or twenty years into their career might not?

JL: I think a sense of companionship and camaraderie because I was just going through this five years ago... Jarrett and I have grown to be friends in a very genuine way.

EP: Do you find you also benefit from the relationship?

JL: Yeah, definitely... even though I am young and I have had kind of limited experience, I think the more you learn about the kind of politics behind how movies get made and the kind of machine behind how movies get made, sometimes, the more you learn the less empowered you feel... it can sort of take your eye off the ball and distract you from what you really want to do in the first place. And seeing someone who really has that kind of pure, unadulterated vision and desire to accomplish exactly what they want to accomplish... without having been jaded in any way, that's always remarkably helpful.

EP: Did you have mentors?

JL: I had a lot of people I looked up to who gave me advice, took me under their wing. A lot of people who didn't know they were my mentors I think... out of college I worked for Paul Schrader, the writer for about a year and even though I was getting coffee and managing his schedule and it wasn't necessarily [that he] took me under his wing so to speak, I [just] learned so much from him and I admired him so much that I consider that somewhat of a mentor relationship... .I think most of my mentors aren't filmmakers per se but just people who I met through the course of my life who I admire [for] the way they conducted themselves... I think whenever you learn something from someone who is in a mentor role, it's something you never forget, it's incredibly valuable.

EP: So how did you go from being Paul Schrader's coffee boy to where you are now?

JL: I made a short that was reasonably well received and then a couple of my colleagues at film school were developing a movie that they had found financing for and they wanted me to direct it and it was like a little $500,000 movie. At the time I was right [about] where Jarrett is right now... I was doing a bunch of odd jobs, like checking Craigslist every day... so that I could write and work on my own stuff... .So I took the option of making the movie and the movie ended up turning out pretty well even though it hasn't yet come out, it's called All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. And through that film, which made my producer some money and got us a little attention, they asked me what else I had written and I had written The Wackness... I'm very, very lucky. After that it got hard.

EP: Is there more pressure now that you've had some success?

JL: The decision on what to do next feels much more heavy, yeah, I think so. And also more so because you have more opportunities and those are more options to make the wrong decision.

EP: What's one of the hardest lessons you've learned so far as a young filmmaker?

JL:I think that something can feel like a success one day and then feel like a failure the next ... like, for instance, when we sold that movie Mandy Lane... one night at the Toronto Film Festival... I think myself and my young producing friends, we thought that was it. We thought that, you know, [the] doors were open and we thought that everything would be easy from there on out. And lo and behold here we are three years later and the movie hasn't even come out yet. So I think it's just that you need to have perspective on things and take a long view.