INDIE SPOTLIGHT: Interview with ‘Go On’ Filmmaker Landon Ashworth

In a burned-out wilderness that feels both familiar and otherworldly, Jim lives alone, bound to routines and rituals that keep him from confronting a past he can’t escape. His days are marked by small victories that ring hollow and quiet defeats that seem endless—until a stranger named Zac unexpectedly arrives.

Their uneasy connection slowly reveals the true nature of the place they inhabit: a kind of purgatory for the lost and grieving. As Jim wrestles with solitude, regret, and the meaning of connection, he must decide whether to remain trapped in isolation or embrace the vulnerability it takes to move on.

Go On is a quiet, character-driven meditation on grief, healing, and the transformative power of human connection.

Groundhog purgatory. That’s what it feels like as we enter the world that Jim lives in, day in and day out in the film Go On. It’s predictive, it’s routine, but it’s not without meaning. Writer, director and actor, Landon Ashworth has created a world, unique to itself, but incredibly universal about grief and about the search for answers to questions we simply just don’t have at the ready.

The independent film utilizes the location to its fullest extent – pulling from natural daylight, the left behind tools and equipment from previous “explorers” – each frame a picture you could hang on your wall, thanks to the cinematography by Jon Schweigart the incredible team behind the camera, that Landon ecstatically quips, “amazing human beings at the top of their craft, just playing jazz.”

Having had a sizable following across YouTube and social media that supported Landon’s sketch comedy. But comedy is not just who Landon is. He has a fascinating background outside of his comedy background, having spent years training as a test pilot and advanced studies in astrophysics that help inform his storytelling. He soon jumped into filmmaking, taking a chance on himself and his skills, he wrote and directed a short film that made quite the rounds in the festival circuit. With a lot of heat behind him off the success of the short film, roadblocks lay ahead on his path with countless rejections on his historical drama scripts and so forth. But two years ago, Landon decided, “This is going to be the year that I’ve tried everything that I’ve never tried before.” When told ‘definitely don’t do that’, Landon definitely did do that.

Landon Ashworth spoke with Script about his filmmaking journey, making bold career decisions, his personal connection to his film, his writing process, and more.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: I’d like to talk about the seed of the story, and your personal connection to this story and this world that feels like Groundhog purgatory.

Landon Ashworth: I've been a filmmaker for probably 20 years, and I'm on the spectrum, and it's really hard for me to network. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I moved on a boat, next door to a casting director. And she said to me, 'You're new in town. I'm going to give you the best advice that anybody can possibly give you. There is no A-list actor that doesn't have their own production company. Start making your own stuff.' And being on the spectrum, I'm very black and white, very zeros and ones. So that's exactly what I did. I started making my own stuff by myself, writing, directing, shooting, editing, color correcting, sound mixing, every single thing.

It just so happened that I booked this really big TV commercial within my first two weeks of living in LA that aired for two years. So, I had all the funds that I needed to not have a side job. Every single time I would book a new role, like on a TV show or whatever, I would use the first residual check on upgrading my film equipment.

After about a year of living in Los Angeles, I had all the equipment that I needed to make a movie, but I didn't have a story - and no one told me to make a movie. She said, ‘Start making stuff online.’ So that's what I did. And then I built up a pretty good following from that. I had about 3 million subscribers on YouTube from doing sketch comedy. And then my agent, this is about 10 years ago, said you need to delete your YouTube channel, because everybody's gonna think that you're an influencer. And this is 10 years ago where nobody knew what to do with them… So, I deleted my entire my entire social media, deleted YouTube and Twitter and with big followings because they're like, ‘You're going to be looked down by in Hollywood.’ And they said, ‘You need to take your profession the most seriously that you can. So, if you're going to start making stuff, make short films.’ So that's what I did. I started making shorts.

I went out to Austin to visit my first cousin, Brent, and he has two sons that are on the spectrum. One of them was going through a really hard time, and I invited him to come visit... he came and spent a week with me. I tried to cheer him up. He told me that he was in a much better place. And then just a few days later, his dad called me up and told me - his name was Landon as well - that Landon had taken his own life.

I went to his funeral. I came back home, and when I got home, I woke up at three in the morning and I couldn't sleep, and I was just staring at the ceiling, lost, thinking that I didn't do enough and it was my fault... And then I thought, what if Landon was me, or I were him, and I had taken my own life, and I end up somewhere until I have it figured out, and then I can go to heaven or hell or wherever if an afterlife even exists. What would that world look like?

I grabbed my laptop, and I walked outside at 3:15 am, and I started writing, and I started with ‘Exterior Forest Day’ because I knew that this world would be outdoors. There's no indoors in purgatory or wherever you are. I wrote for 36 straight hours, and that's the script for Go On. Didn't make a single change, not a comma or a period. First draft is what you see on screen.

I sent it to 10 people that had absolutely no reason to be nice to me, and I said, 'Is this script any good? What do you think?' All 10 people and these were objective people that had no reason to be nice to me, all 10 people said, ‘Go make this movie right now.’ I was like, OK, well, the one thing that I've never tried, because this is the year of doing everything that I've never done before, I'm gonna try to crowdfund it. So, within three weeks, I had raised $780,000, six weeks after that, I was on the side of the mountain filming the movie.

Sadie: There’s a slow burn to the world building and the characters that are in it, mainly Jim and Zac. What was your process behind utilizing one location, building this very visceral world and developing that world without holding your audience’s hand - letting us figure things out along the way.

Landon: Yeah, that's so percept perceptive, Sadie. Thank you for picking up on that and being present enough to notice. The tricky thing is after finishing the script, I asked everyone the question, 'Am I trying to be too cute and not give enough?' Because, one risks with a quiet, dramatic film taking place in Purgatory, the more you give, I feel, the more you have to explain, and the more you explain, the less the audience has to think. And there is that really scary line, when you're making films of, 'Am I making Tenant that no one understands what's going on? Or I'm making Inception where everybody wants to talk about what's going on at the end?' I knew I wanted it to be a think piece.

And I think the interesting way that I write... I sit down, I start writing, and I don't stop until the script is done, however long it takes me. This one and the other ones in the past, the way that I write is I live the story with the characters. I'm in there with them. I feel like when you plot, if you're very smart, you can plot together a very interesting, convoluted, deeply intelligent script. But I'm truly drawn to less contrived stories where it feels like you're living in a world and world building is important to me, almost more important than when you start getting plot heavy. I usually find myself turning off movies after the plot building is over, because I'm like, 'Well, now it's not fun anymore. Now I know what the rules are, or are established now. Now I can just guess what's going to happen.' And I'm right 95% of the time, as I'm sure you would be as well.

I wanted to live this experience with the characters. I find it it's my voice. I don't know if I'm a good writer, or if it's good stories, or people will connect, but it's how I do it. I truly love the idea of living in the world with these characters and Zac demanding the answers, and Jim having no answers for him very much is the same with my little cousin Landon. He wanted all the answers. At the end of the day, I kept telling him, ‘I don't know why things are the way they are. All I know is that life gets better.’

This is a film in my mind that enters in on a person - Jim could have been there for a thousand years for all we knew. I tried to make it as timeless as humanly possible. I'm able to just hopscotch between each person's perspective... I'm basically just getting in fights with myself, as any writer does.

Sadie: Their dynamic is so great. I literally gasped when Zac moved on. I was so happy for him, yet so heartbroken for Jim.

Landon: My wife hates dramas, hates them, and so, of course, my first film is a drama when I'm from comedy. But she watched it, and she is not an emotional person. And when Zac went on, she started crying. She's like, 'I know it's you on screen, and I know it's Vincent Kartheiser, but when he's gone, I'm so fucking sad for you.' And every time I watch the movie... thank God I'm able to separate myself from the project. But when I watch it, I'm like, 'I'm so fucking sad for me!' He got him and they were starting to make all these breakthroughs... You hope that somebody watches your movie and wants to live a story. They're not like, 'God, just tell me what's gonna happen.' It's not a movie for those people.

Go On will be showing at these upcoming film festivals: