The patient needs to believe that they can keep the fire while being medicated. The doctors must tell them, "I understand that you experienced something beautiful. I understand that you saw the stars pulsing spirals of fire across the sky like Van Gogh did when he was looking outside the sanitarium window. But you know what? He didn't paint ['Starry Night'] when he was manic. He painted it when he was sane because he didn't need the mania to have the magic."

David Lynch was actually the one who first inspired me to become a filmmaker when I was in high school. His films just took me to that dream place that lifts you out of the norm, out of the everyday life, and that is kind of what allured me.

If they could say that to their patients, it could be a way to treatment, as in both working on it and preserving it. That could give a patient the faith to fully experience that beauty, without reliving the torment.

Fellini was [David] Lynch's master and his biggest idol, and he believed in Fellini's view that film is a dream, it's not reality. It's all about delving into the unconscious.

Do you think you can love too much? Or experience too much beauty, at the cost of too much pain? Do you think when art is defined by expressing so much beauty and so much pain, just to be able to cope with both - and bring other people something creatively beautiful at the cost of that pain - that we can draw a line of 'normalcy'? It's important to think about.

Vincent van Gogh was sane when he painted that piece of art, because when you you feel the mania and depression, you have all the heaven and hell your heart has ever experienced that you can tap into, to be able to create something that can last several lifetimes.

I want the audience to think about how many people are hiding in the shadows with the condition. I want the film to take away the stigma of thinking of this as a disease and an illness to be crushed. I want those in the condition to shine and contribute to the human spirit.