The Beautiful People

Seth Reiss reveals all about the fantastical A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

- WORDS: STEVE O'BRIEN

ASK MOST SCREENWRITERS about their latest movie and they'll rarely say the idea arrived fully formed. Yet for Seth Reiss, he remembers distinctly the moment he came up with the concept for his newest film.

"I was on Interstate 95 in a rental car," he recalls, "and I was very depressed and in need of something, and then I was like, 'What if the GPS said, 'Would you like to go on a big, bold, beautiful journey?'"

Those exact words would come to title Reiss's followup to 2022's deliciously black satire The Menu. Despite arising from one of the lowest points in the writer's life, A Big Bold Beautiful Journey is a radiant, life-affirming blast of positivity, at a time where that seems to be exactly what we need.

Best described as a romantic fantasy, the film is, in Reiss's words, "about two people who are given this opportunity to revisit their past and the events that have shaped who they are, in order to make a different choice about their lives and how they go forward. It's about getting to know a person you might be in a relationship with and really getting to know them and them really getting to know you."