A lonely gay man falls in love with an artificially intelligent car over the course of a road trip.

Can you tell us what inspired you to bring this story to life?

Honestly it was an article on the internet about a guy having sex with his cars. That coupled with the movie HER, and my obsession with Black Mirror really brought this thing into the forefront of my mind. I was also suuuuuuper lonely at the time felt like I had nothing to offer and was doomed to be alone. So I created a world in which I fell in love with a car and was like, this is sad. Or is it? Arguably Jeff is the better person in this script than David ever could be, I think. Anyway, after I wrote the script and met my director Aidan Brezonick, he encouraged me to go deeper, and that’s where the monologue in the car comes from. My real coming out story. Hard to believe truth can come from a movie with man-on-car sexytime, but hey, I contain multitudes.

Have to ask, did the Tesla drive itself the entire shoot?

So it actually never was driven by itself. We did “drive-assist” mode on the highway to and from set, but we were all too scared and too much was riding on it driving perfectly to try to do that during our shoot. Plus we had rented the Tesla from someone who had no idea we were using it for a film shoot so we had to be super careful. So if you’re seeing this, random woman we rented this car from in LA, sorry we scratched the wheel (we paid for it and she never knew so we’re not bad people I swear)!

Curious to know your thoughts on AI technology, are we all doomed to Jeff?

Weirdly enough, I think AI technology is actually a good thing! Because here’s the rub: AI was created in the eye of the beholder. So if anything is wrong with artificial intelligence inherently, it is because of the humans who created them. Of course I am absolutely 100% not a scientist, so take everything I can with a two-ton boulder of rock salt. Either way, I think ‘Jeff Drives You’ is less about the dangers of AI and more about the cyclical nature of trauma. Here we are, Jeff (a baby gay) and David (a broken-hearted gay) together in a car, bonding. David was hurt beyond comparison by someone older, and when Jeff and him share intimacy, rather than embrace Jeff’s love, he does the exact same thing that was done to him. Sad, but hey, life’s sad sometimes.