032 WTFuture- Interview with Filmmaker Brett Leonard
Friday, October 30, 2026 Listen Now to 032 WTFU Brett Leonard
Video Playist of 032 WTFU Brett Leonard
I kicked off my birthday weekend at our beach house after subjecting my guests to an all-night video marathon, leaving poor Mrs. Future to pull an “elf move,” wiring all our recording gear into place while I slept, so we could podcast on schedule!
For this week we sit down with my long time buddy, Brett Leonard, a filmmaker whose sprawling résumé spans pioneering cyberspace in The Lawnmower Man to being cornered by convention fans who only care about the time he played an angry, machete-wielding alien in Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Before we even got to his vision for digital media, Brett took me on a whirlwind tour through our shared past—reminiscing about auditioning five hundred Santa Cruz spiritual hippies to play brain-crunching zombies in The Dead Pit, sharing George Lucas’s private birthday party at Skywalker Ranch, and sitting stark naked in an Esalen hot tub receiving career advice from the great mythologist, Joseph Campbell!
Just when I thought my decades of shooting thousands of hours of video footage had driven everyone crazy, Brett validated my life’s work by declaring it the raw data for an “AI Gaussian-splatting time machine!! Go figure.. Then, fueled by a cup of “Flower of Life” tea, he launched into his cosmic insight that artificial intelligence isn’t artificial at all as computer chips are made of silicon and rare earth elements, making AI literally wise rocks channeling Gaian nature spirits. “Holy quartz crystals, Batman!”
By the time he transitioned from unconditional cosmic love to “Emergent Interactive Narrative” cinematic story telling, all I could do was smile and grok in classic Santa Cruz fashion; frankly, the best birthday gift a guy called Dr. Future could ask for.. Enjoy!
