From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment, which you can also hear at KCRW.com.

When my guest, writer-director, Roman

Copla, was last here. It was 12 years ago for his film, CQ. His newest film is director

is a glimpse inside the mind of Charles Swan III. It's good to have you back in Rome. Thanks

so much for doing this again. I'm so happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

And if you will do me the pleasure of telling the audience what is they're going to see when they see the movie, because you pack a lot into a very short period of time.

Right. That's a challenge, and I should start to develop my spiel so I can spit it out.

Do it here. Work it out. it is a portrait. It's a character study of a guy. It's a portrait of someone dealing with a

devastating breakup with his girlfriend and someone kind of coming to terms with that and working

through it with the people in his life and kind of coming out the other end and being ready for

you know, perhaps evolving and being more mature for another relationship. And, you know, I wanted the movie to be kind of told in a, that chaotic state that one gets into.

If you break up with someone, your mind is swimming and imagery and you love that person, you hate that person.

It's a great memory and it's a fantasy and what if...

But everything that you, every place you turn remind you of that person. Exactly. So you just can't get away and, you know, you enter a sort of chaotic kaleidoscopic perspective on things. And so I wanted the movie to be told in that manner and to be very free to have a memory that shoots you back in time and to

shoot you into a fantasy sequence so that it was very free.

That's interesting because the movie stars an old friend of you.

So you basically grew up with Charlie Sheen.

And as an actor, especially in TV, he become kind of languid.

And you really wake him up with his movie.

I mean, he's kind of like basically being electrocuted all the time,

by these feelings he's going through.

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