After watching Lord, Save Us From Your Followers, I got a chance to talk with the film's star and director, Dan Merchant, via phone. The conversation was fun and encouraging, but also a bit longer than I had promised. Many thanks to Dan for spending that time with me. Below is our lengthy conversation, slightly edited for space (and because I possess the oratorical eloquence of Porky Pig). Enjoy!

ms: Looking at your resume on IMDB, you've got quite a bit of experience in filmmaking, including winning a few Emmys. Can you start off by giving us a brief history of your film career?

dm: I started out in local television writing sketch comedy, contributing to a show in Seattle, Washington called Almost Live. That's where I met Bill Nye the Science Guy. He was one of the staff writers there. The host of that program, John Keister, actually coined that phrase "Bill Nye the Science Guy." I did a pilot program at the CBS affiliate in Portland, Oregon, where I worked for a number of years and did another kids' show there. And those were the Emmys that I won—Northwest Region Emmys—on a couple of different kids' shows.

And then from there, I started pitching shows to Hollywood and partnered with a buddy of mine who was the head writer of Almost Live at one point. I did those pilots for Fox and finally got a show to stick with the VH1 project Strange Frequency. We did a dozen episodes of those, and I worked with a couple of buddies that I brought in. That one was summer camp with a paycheck. (laughing) That was a lot of fun to do. Then right on the heels of that, I got a chance to pitch a dramatic series idea to Warner Bros. and they loved it. They took me to CBS, so I sold that in the room and got as far as the pilot script phase in that whole, y'know, network television lottery.

And then not terribly long after that, I wrote a novel and then started this Lightning Strikes company with the executive producer, Jeff Martin, of Lord, Save Us From Your Followers. I've essentially been on Lord Save Us ever since—even between those different things. For about the past 15 years, I've worked here and there producing and directing commercials and long-form advertising. That's sort of the other schoolyard for learning how to direct: working with little crews and big crews, dealing with clients, and doing all the negotiating and all the sort of stuff you have to get good at. Those are sort of the dual pathways.

ms: Is there one specific medium—whether it's television, film or novels—that you're really passionate about?

dm: Well, at the risk of sounding like a pretentious jerk, I'm a storyteller. (laughing) I'm a storyteller, Mark, and, y'know, it kinda depends on the story—which format feels right. I'm in the middle of a screenplay and I'm working on a couple of novels as well as a non-fiction book that picks up where Lord, Save Us From Your Followers left off. Some stories and characters and situations lend themselves for television, where you've got to come up with, "Boy I've got to figure out a hundred different things to do with these characters." And then other things are just fanciful and difficult to sell as a movie at this phase, so I'm just like, "Y'know, I'm just gonna write that as a book." And you have a different kind of freedom writing a book. I really can be equally jazzed about all of them because they all have different challenges and different advantages to them.

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