Ryan Heller

Vanessa, we do have to give a little shout out to our new bestie.

I call everyone besties, but who did I meet who's a good friend of yours last week?

Lucas Ford, who was an assistant at the time, discovered Kane Parsons and I think just the original online series and was the one who brought it into the fold and brought it to Dan Cohen and his team.

So he definitely was instrumental and it's a lesson that assistants everywhere should be paying attention to material and reading stuff and watching things.

And I can't

remember, Dan, maybe you remember when you and I talked about it.

It's often the case that Dan and I are very close friends and we often kind of compare notes on the things we're getting.

And we've gotten this separately.

Making a fable that examines the constructs of marriage and features a man in a wicker costume had to be on the list of projects too risky to take on at the time.

But the script by the directors was undeniable, in the words of the financier and producer Ryan Heller.

That and the construction of the suit helped get his company, Topic Studios, to provide half the budget, which two sources close to the production put around $10 million.

Yet no one breathed easy until the suit could be tested on camera.