Dan Egan is an Australian-Canadian writer and filmmaker, who is currently based in Los Angeles. He is particularly passionate about genre movies, magical realism, and he sees cinema as tool “to create the impossible. He has written and directed two short films and a television series, plus we has acted on countless movies. His latest work Dream Machine, (from 2025; review to follow soon!), about a mechanic grappling with the competition of flying cars, won two significant awards: Best Sci-Fi at LA Shorts International Film Festival and Best Sci-Fi Short at Studio City International Film Festival.

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Eoghan Lyng – Please tell us about the genesis of Dream Machine!

Dan Egan – Thanks for having me! Dream Machine is a story that’s been near and dear to my heart for almost 10 years. Back on my 21st birthday I busted a tire in a mad dash to Vegas, leaving me stranded in the middle of the desert. Eventually I stumbled upon a run down auto-shop a mile’s drive away, where this quiet, older immigrant couple helped nurse my car back into good health. They didn’t speak a word of English, but the care and expertise the mechanic showed while fixing my car spoke volumes. It’s easy to see how people like them can be forgotten by the march of progress — so I wanted to use flashy sci-fi storytelling in order to frame the tale and give these two their moment in the spotlight.

EL – Short films often thrive on spontaneity. Are there narrative perspectives that can be best achieved through a more economical runtime?

DL – Absolutely! It’s a known factor in the industry that short films work better when you drill down into a single concept – often the simpler the better. I ran with that by trying to answer the question: “What would happen to an auto-shop owner in a world of flying cars?”. Turns out there was a lot of complexity to our answer, so it was a wonderfully fulfilling creative challenge to work a whole three act story into 18 minutes.

EL – How difficult was it to apply the flying cars to the blue sky?

DL – Since we were working on a short film budget, we wanted to keep the number of shots in which flying cars are seen clearly to a minimum, but it was still important to have some big moments where we got to shock and wow the audience with the scale of the world. All credit goes to Magic Pie UK – the VFX studio that worked movie magic and did all the CGI and compositing in the film. They accomplished the impossible in record time and were an absolute charm to work with. They also happen to be led by my childhood friend, Texas Loveday (yes, that is his real name), which was an added bonus.

EL – The central character seems to drink a great deal. Is there a connection between alcohol abuse and marital failure?

DL – The lead character, Marco, is a master-mechanic who doesn’t get to do what he loves because of the invention of flying cars. This leads to resentment, so he copes by numbing the pain with alcohol. It’s a trap many folks fall into, and addiction can threaten relationships of all kinds — not just marriages. Our cinematographer made the beer bottle appear larger than life, while our sound designer and composer built tension in our soundscape to show how this addictive force was taking over Marco’s life and threatening his marriage.

EL – The automotive stylings bring Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and the Coen Bros’ film to mind. Were those an influence?

DL – Those are great filmmakers, although honestly, the 1950s retro-futuristic aesthetic was more inspired by Wes Anderson’s storybook visual style. The 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air we used as our hero car model was also meant to evoke the 1950s vision of the American Dream – a fantasy that our lead characters have denied by the march of progress.

EL – The image of a flying car has been a cinematic trope since the 1920s. What is it that makes it so intriguing?

DL – That dream of taking to the sky for your morning commute has been with us for about as long as we’ve had automobiles. After World War II, Americans imagined a bold vision of the future, with flying cars as just one of an endless score of impossible technical innovations. I think it’s that reason that flying cars are such a big part of cinematic canon – from Blade Runner [Ridley Scott, 1982] to Grease [Randal Kleieer, 1978] -, and why I was so interested in using them as a visual metaphor for our film.

EL – In your film, cars fall from the sky. Is there a connection with heavenly God?

DL – You can see early in the film that Marco and Isabela have filled their home and lives with symbols of Christian faith. While Marco drinks himself to death he stares continually at a portrait of Jesus, suffering, dragging the cross to its final destination. In a way, Marco also feels damned – so when a flying car falls from the sky and its owner offers him a chance to fix it, it feels like a benevolent offering from above. These images were all very intentional, as I wanted to show how the forces of technology and faith can influence an individual’s life and leave them feeling stuck in the middle.

EL – Which sequence was the most challenging to piece together in terms of SFX?

DL – The sound effects were one of the longer parts of post-production for this film, and a very rewarding exercise as a creative. I worked with the wonderful Adam Baker to build a soundscape that was rich, vivid and capable of carrying an audience through a film with very little dialogue. One of the hardest sections to get right was the scene where Marco was watching the TV ad for the new flying car, the MX Dream Machine. We wanted it to sound cheerful and sunshiny, while also building tension to make it clear that Marco is getting more and more furious – building to a crescendo of wild, overlapping sounds!

EL – At one point husband and wife are tasked with relocating for greater amounts of money. Is this a dilemma faced by many in your home country?

DL – I’m from Australia, and like the United States, our immigration policy is less than ideal. People come to Australia seeking a better life and are often forced into refugee camps that are nearly impossible to navigate. In the US, immigrants come from south of the border to work and build businesses that can support their communities, while corporate and political powers conspire to push them out and rob them of that opportunity. The job and relocation offer from the flying car owner at the end of the film might feel like a fortuitous new start, but Marco correctly identifies it as a false promise.

EL – Do you think Dream Machine has the potential to grow into a feature film, or a television series?

DL – I do! There’s a feature film version of Dream Machine that would expand outwards and reveal what would have happened if Marco had actually taken the stranger’s offer at the end. It would highlight how the riches of our capitalist world can seduce those on the bottom rungs of society – leading to a cautionary, retro-futuristic fairytale.

EL – What’s your next dream-come-true?

DL – I’d love to write and direct a film or television series, and have a good number of spec scripts in my back pocket ready to go. As you can tell, I love genre filmmaking, and can’t wait to make more of it! My next project is a psychological horror feature, currently in development — so hopefully we’ll be having a chat about that in a couple of years!

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Dan is pictured on both images illustrating this article.