315: How to Go On with Filmmaker Landon Ashworth

This episode features Landon Ashworth, an actor, director, and filmmaker with a background as a pilot and a graduate of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. He discusses his personal journey as an autistic individual and the inspiration behind his award-winning new film, Go On.

Here are three key takeaways from the discussion:

• A Journey of Resilience and Reinvention. Landon Ashworth shared that as a child, he was a bullied autistic kid who was advised to try acting classes to mask his autism and learn to fit in. This led to a lifelong background in the arts, even as he pursued his primary dream of becoming an astronaut, which involved flight school, becoming a test pilot, and earning advanced degrees in astrophysics and filmmaking. After repeatedly facing setbacks in his astronaut career due to changing NASA requirements and budget cuts, he turned back to filmmaking.

• Creating One's Own Opportunities. A casting director advised Ashworth that every A-list celebrity has their own production company, encouraging him to create his own work instead of waiting for opportunities. Initially, his black-and-white interpretation of this advice led him to write, direct, and edit nearly a thousand comedy sketches completely by himself, as he struggled with the social dynamics and unreliability of collaboration. However, his career plateaued until he began to seek advice from showrunners, ultimately leading him on a path of scriptwriting and short filmmaking, culminating in the creation of his feature film.

• The Power and Purpose of Go On. Ashworth's feature film, Go On, was written in a single 36-hour period as he processed the loss of his young autistic cousin to suicide. The film is his attempt to pay tribute to his cousin and is a story about a person in purgatory wrestling with past trauma and unable to process it, ultimately exploring themes of grief, healing, and the resilience of the human mind. He shared that his ultimate hope is that the film gives people hope, and he has already received messages from three individuals stating that watching the film helped prevent them from taking their own lives. Ashworth is committed to answering every message he receives, seeing his platform as a space for the "underdog".