Colorado road trip comedy tackles aid in dying
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It's not a Colorado movie until you film the characters in a Subaru. Photo: Crowded Table Pictures
A Colorado-made road trip comedy tackles a decidedly unfunny, but very timely, topic: choosing when to die.
Why it matters: "Durango Seems Like a Great Place to Die" uses Colorado's landscapes as the backdrop for a mother-son story about medical aid in dying, grief and the uncomfortable conversations families often avoid.
Driving the news: Crews just wrapped filming on the independent feature, which follows 67-year-old Sonia (Susan Messing) and her 34-year-old son, Ezra (Adam Wesley), on an unconventional road trip from Denver to Durango.
Zoom in: Sonia is "a free-spirited Boulder bohemian" deeply impacted by watching her husband endure a slow and painful death.
- Ezra is a college professor whose own life is unraveling amid a divorce, forced sabbatical and move back into his childhood bedroom.
- During a game of pickleball, Sonia tells Ezra she's decided she wants to die on her own terms — in Durango — leaving him to let her go alone or join the trip and try to change her mind.
Between the lines: Colorado isn't just scenery, it's a character, c0-director AJ Campli said.
- "Something we're really going for in this movie is that people live here, they raise families here, they grow old here, and it's not just an epic landscape that you come to ski on vacation, right?
- "It's a beautiful place where people live and breathe and exist."
Zoom in: Because Colorado is such a big part of the movie, filming on location was a must.
- Locations included a cabin in Nederland and the Foot of the Mountain Lodge in Boulder, along with Denver and Durango.
- "We're actually putting our actors on Colorado roads and doing it authentically, and so we're really proud of that," producer Tyler Sapp told us.
What's next: "Durango Seems Like A Great Place to Die," is targeting a finished edit next spring before hitting the film festival circuit.