Santa Cruz Film Festival 2011

Jack MacKenzie (David Arquette, Scream, The Tripper SCFF 2005) was once a hot shot Hollywood composer, but, has fallen on hard times. To make ends meet he takes a demeaning job as a limo driver, and tries to put his life back together so that he can win back his family and career. However, Jack is crushed under the combined weight of grief over his lost daughter and alcoholism.

Catching a break, Jack is assigned to drive A-List Actor Thomas Bower back-and- forth to the set of his latest film, and they build a friendship of sorts. Bower remembers the score Jack had written for a science fiction epic earlier, and appears interested and willing to help him get re-established. Jack also fatefully befriends Erica Long (Bijou Phillips, The Art of Travel SCFF 2008), a model and singer, although she too is struggling with her own demons.

Battling haunted spirits, depression, sorrow and addiction, Jack starts to lose control of the one thing he values most . . . his mind. He must pull himself together before something or someone cracks under pressure. However, in the city of dreams, life takes on surreal twists that eventually throw Jack into a world known as the Land of the Astronauts.

Featuring powerful performances, beautiful cinematography and an ethereal, melancholic score by Carlos Durango, The Land of the Astronauts is a sensitive and dreamlike psychological character study of a man facing dire circumstances.