'Linoleum' director, stars share personal connections to mind-bending sci-fi film

Inspiration can strike a creative mind any time, and it found director Colin West at a very difficult time in his family's life.

In 2015, West began writing the script for "Linoleum" based on his grandfather, who developed dementia in his later years, and his six-decades-long marriage, mixed with West's personal coming-of-age flourishes. Three years later, his grandfather died, and West received his watch, which he noticed was three hours off.

As he thought longer about it, the director realized his grandfather "either was living three hours in the future, or we're all living three hours in the past," he told The Desert Sun.

When he went back to the script, he put that idea on the page and it became the timeline twisty, mind-bending sci-fi film starring Jim Gaffigan and Rhea Seehorn that it is today. "Linoleum" will screen at the Palm Springs International Film Festival on Jan. 9, 10 and 15, and all three are expected to attend the festival.

Gaffigan stars as Cameron, the host of a failing children's science TV show − à la the popular '90s series "Bill Nye The Science Guy" − who has always had aspirations of being an astronaut. But recently he's been in a rut, especially with his strained relationship with daughter Nora (Katelyn Nacon) and crumbling marriage with Erin (Seehorn), who has lost her sense of wonder. When strange occurrences start happening, like Cameron witnessing a car falling out of the sky or a doppelgänger moving into the house next door, he begins to realize there may be more to his life story than he once thought.

Gaffigan said he "loved" the script when he first read it and "thought it was super ambitious," especially when it came to filming during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the more he focused on the story, the more he saw how relatable it was, especially when it came to thinking about his own ambitions in life. At one point, acting was a "pie in the sky idea," and he could connect to Cameron and how he felt stuck.

"I’ve been very lucky in my career. I’ve had really nice moments of success, but there are moments where you feel like the wheels are coming off of what you want to do," Gaffigan said. "I wanted to portray that as certain passivity. There is something about when things are going right that you feel like you’re in charge, and when things aren’t, you feel the world is happening to you."

Cameron not only struggles with personal relationships but also has his career taken from him when neighbor Kent Armstrong (also played by Gaffigan, but as a more cold, full-of-rage character) arrives in town, and his own father grows more and more forgetful.

As if things couldn't get any worse, a mysterious space-race era satellite lands in his backyard, and his midlife crisis manifests in a plan to rebuild the machine into his own rocket ship. Though Cameron is "the constant victim of situation after situation," Gaffigan said he didn't "want to act like a victim." The actor added that his character "could articulate how unfair things were, but he didn't have the luxury of feeling sorry for himself." And sure enough, Cameron keeps moving forward despite all obstacles.

What resonated with Seehorn the most was "the balance one has to have between wanting to achieve your goals, and remembering to appreciate the life you already have," she wrote in an email. Erin, too, dreams of the stars, but her goals changed over the years, as old videotapes show Cameron and Erin hosting the children's science television show long ago.

"For me, I felt that somewhere along the way, Erin got put into the pragmatic box, and Cameron got to be the dreamer. I think that can be very hard, especially since they fell in love both being dreamers," Seehorn said. "I looked for places in scenes to show Erin still trying to reach out to Cameron to ask him to meet her halfway, so that they could share the responsibilities of being an adult, giving both of them the room to still have childlike wonder."

There's much to contemplate about success, long lost dreams and hope in "Linoleum," and West said those themes, as well as thinking about the "what ifs" in life, often make it into his work mainly because he's thinking about them himself. If he wasn't a filmmaker, he said he would be a scientist. He grew up in a house of science and loved watching "Bill Nye The Science Guy," which is easily recognized in the film.

Working with his cast, West said collaborating with them was "a true joy" because they brought much more to their characters after studying them for so long. He likes to think of his actors as "department heads" for their characters because they usually know much more about them than he does by the end of filming.

Seehorn said that she and West, on occasion, made tweaks to Erin's scenes in order to "find the best way to convey what (West) was telling me he wanted. We were very much on the same page with Erin's journey, and it was wonderful to piece it together." She also called Gaffigan a "great scene partner."

The film leads up to a mind-bending twist that helps explain all the bizarre occurrences in the film. Seehorn said she was blown away by how the director built up to the big reveal. Gaffigan encourages audiences to "go in with an open mind."

As Palm Springs audience members view the film over the next few days, West believes they will find one strong message to carry into their lives.

"I think a lot of people take different things from it and/or connect to different pieces of it because it's an ensemble film that follows a lot of story lines, but this message of hope is something that I think a lot of people latch onto," he said. "This idea of hope through aging or through trauma, these things life puts in front of you, that's a message that I like people to take away."

How to watch

What: "Linoleum"

When and Where: 7:15 p.m. Monday, Jan. 9 at Camelot Theatres (Palm Springs Cultural Center); 11 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 10 at Annenberg Theater; and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 15 at Camelot Theatres (Palm Springs Cultural Center)

How much: $13 for general seating

More info: psfilmfest.org

Ema Sasic covers entertainment and health in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at ema.sasic@desertsun.com or on Twitter @ema_sasic.

This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: 'Linoleum' director, stars share personal connections to sci-fi film