Last January, Drake Doremus entered his small, personal film into competition at the Sundance Film Festival, with hopes that the right people would see it, love it, and hopefully buy it. To say that things went according to plan is an understatement. Not only did Like Crazy—a naturalistic drama about a young couple caught in the throes of a long distance relationship—win the Special Grand Jury Prize, but it was bought by Paramount, the most major of major studios. Now in its second week of release, Like Crazy will be in theaters nationwide by Thanksgiving, and has claimed its mantle as one of the most talked about films of the fall.

The movie, which stars Felicity Jones and Anton Yelchin as the star-crossed pair, gave Doremus the clout to go big—or relatively big—on his next picture, which he filmed last summer in New York, and stars Jones, Guy Pearce, Amy Ryan, and newcomer Mackenzie Davis. Doremus recently visited our offices to offer his interpretation of the sometimes ambiguous Like Crazy, and to share exclusive details about his next project. 

How many times have you seen Like Crazy? 
I don’t watch it anymore. I stopped watching it in Toronto, that’s the last time I saw it. It’s really difficult because I don’t really see the movie the same way anymore.

How do you see it now?
I’m just older, so when I watch the movie, I see like a younger version of myself making that film as opposed to the filmmaker I am today, which would have made a very different movie. But where I was at that time in my life and what I had to say about love and life and relationships, that’s certainly in the film.

Your new film is shot, but doesn’t have a title. Do you have anything in mind?
To be honest, nothing yet. It’s crazy. Hopefully something will present itself soon. It’s frustrating, because everyone always asks what it’s called, and we just don’t have a title.

Have you started to feel a Like Crazy awards push from the powers that be?
I do feel that. It’s funny, because it’s certainly not something I’m focusing on or thinking about. I’m focusing on sharing the message of the film with as many people as possible.

This whole process has been your first exposure to the Hollywood Industrial Complex. What’s that been like? 
It’s very strange, the business side of things. Making the film was such a creative endeavor, and there were never any creative compromises, but the amount of money being spent on the marketing campaign is like forty times the size of the budget we made the movie for. That’s hilarious to me, but I will say this: everyone at Paramount is genuinely in this for the right reasons. They didn’t buy the movie and they’re not backing the movie and they’re not pushing the movie because of money or because they have to. Their hearts are 100% in it.

Have people been coming up to you and telling you how authentic this film feels to them?
Well people come up to me and say, “That’s my story,” and that’s awesome.

Is Jacob and Anna’s relationship true love, or is it an addiction that neither can quite shake?
For them, the relationship becomes like trying to come back to a moment that existed, that’s in the past, and that doesn’t exist anymore. It’s that first three or four months that you cling to, or want to relive over and over again, like a drug. That’s the saddest thing of all, because while you’re in it, you can’t tell yourself that it’s not real, or that it doesn’t exist anymore. I feel like it’s two things, to be concise: One, it’s Jacob and Anna trying to get back to that moment, and two, it’s Jacob and Anna trying to move on from each other and not being able to. It’s somewhere in between those two, and it’s the grey area that’s devastating. That’s something that I really wanted to convey.

Like Crazy has an ambiguous ending, but is it ambiguous for you?
No, it’s so funny I feel like it’s ambiguous in some ways, and it’s not in other ways. For me, I really wanted the audience to feel exhausted. The relationship has taken such a toll on them emotionally that they have so little left to give. Whether they have nothing left to give and it’s over at that moment, or they will stagger into a sort of half-state of a relationship over the next couple months or a year is really up to the audience.

Were you trying to give the audience the power to create their own story after the film finished?
Yeah, I think it’s such a personal story for the audience and for me, that to jam something so conclusive in there would be untrue or manipulative, because I think this movie is what you bring to it from your life. I’ve read some reviews where people just don’t get the film, and it’s just so clear that they’ve never been through anything like this at all. If you have, then you have your own ending, and it wouldn’t be right of me to try and force mine on the audience.

We’ve covered the story of how you find Felicity Jones, but tell me how you cam across Anton Yelchin?
I think as far as kids in their early ‘20s in Hollywood, he’s one of the best actors. He’s a chameleon and a great character actor, and I didn’t want to go for just some good looking model kid, I wanted to go for an actor, someone who just has really good chops. He was on my list right from the start, and then I met with him and we spent three hours together talking about the character and talking about how I make movies and how he likes to work, and we were just on the same page pretty much right from the start.

What can you tell me about the film you just shot? Did the bigger budget change anything?
Well, the food is a little bit better. What it changes is just the atmosphere. The scope of the new movie is so much bigger.

How so?
There were scenes with 500 extras in the background. It’s just a bigger scope to the story. The backdrop of the story is in a much bigger world, it’s not so intensely in two people’s heads as they go through a relationship. This is about a guy who’s married and takes in a foreign exchange student, and he has a daughter and this very strange sort of emotional connection happens over the course of the semester. while this student, Felicity Jones, stays in this house. Hopefully it’ll be a beautiful throwback to some more classic love stories, like A Place in the Sun.

Where did the story come from?
It started from my obsession over the last year with classical music and the piano. It started with my composer Dustin O’Halloran, who did the score for Marie Antoinette and then Like Crazy, and just non-stop listening to his piano work. I wanted to write a story set against the backdrop of the fabric of that music.

So the piano is a big part of the story?
Yeah, Felicity’s character is a pianist. She’s great in this movie, and it’s a much different character than Anna, much darker and complex. The way we’ve been describing the film is like a darker cousin to Like Crazy; It still retains a lot of the same core integral values of how we make films, just on a bigger, darker, more romantic thriller-y stage. It’s a little bit more of a more romantic thriller. You never know, someone might kill somebody.

Do you ever worry that you don’t have another film in you?
Of course. Right now, I’m not even thinking about what’s next, because I have both of these films. But if I’m not hungry or passionate or don’t have an idea, then I shouldn’t be making a movie. So yeah, I get nervous about it, but I also feel like I’m in a really creative time in my life where I’m not too nervous about it at the moment.