Director's Statement:

I was twenty-two when I began working on Finally, Lillian and Dan.  Twenty-three when we shot it.  Twenty-four and twenty-five throughout the course of editing.  Almost twenty-six when people, very few people, saw it in its final form.

At one point I expressed interest in changing the title:  something more ... adult?  Something that referred to what I felt the film had come to be about.  Something that inferred it was more than only a love story, though a love story through and through.  A friend convinced me to leave the title alone; he said I shouldn’t forget or discount the reasons for starting the project simply because I was older now and looking at things differently.

When I began I was working at a cafe.  In the mornings a young woman would come in, like most, to purchase a mobile breakfast on the way to work.  She seemed pained to make the choice between pastries as if there was much more to the decision than I, as an outsider, understood.  The weight of her entire history was bearing down on this seemingly inconsequential decision; it would continue to do so, every morning, and I was fascinated by the inherent questions. 

Regardless of the answers, it seemed to me that she was under-represented in love stories:  capital “L” Love stories that bore no resemblance to the little “l” moments I found so familiar.  There was drama to be found in such inconsequence, or rather, drama behind it.  I decided to tell a little “l” love story - as realistically as I could, awkwardly, about how desperate it feels at times, this thing, this wanting to fall.