Exclusive Interview With Earth To Echo Director Dave Green

Earth to Echo is the story of a group of suburban kids going through a tumultuous time in their lives. The group of friends who have grown up together will soon be forced to move apart as their families head in different directions. It’s a story inspired by classic family films of the 1980s, such as E.T., The Goonies, and Stand by Me, which all placed normal kids in extraordinary situations. We spoke to Earth to Echo director Dave Green about what makes these kinds of stories, which use young people as their main protagonists, so endearing.

“And I think what’s fun about that as an adult, what’s fun about watching stories like that, is that there’s part of us that always hangs off that stuff, that always has that imagination and I think part of the reason we might see stories like this is because stories about 12, or 13, or 14 resonate, at least with me, because at that age it’s the first point in your life where you’re thinking like an adult and you are really standing on your own two feet and also dealing with responsibility. And even though the kids in the movie sometimes have kid logic, in that they would do things that you or me would never do because they’re kids and they think differently – sometimes more brilliantly – than we do, that makes their stories fun to watch and funny to watch. It’s like when Tuck thinks Echo is a bomb and he’s slamming it on the ground. It’s just kid logic, but it’s also…you can see a version of yourself doing that at the same time.”

While there’s archetypal similarity between Earth to Echo and E.T. – and even other films that have been inspired by it, such as J.J. Abrams’ Super 8 – Green says that, when you look closer, they’re really about different things.

“Super 8, which is a movie I liked a lot, is very much a nostalgic movie for adults that adults, like me, who grew up in the 80s and grew on those Spielberg films,” he says. “Through the sake of setting the movie in the late 70s and a lot of other cinematography tropes, that was very much built as a nostalgia piece for people my age and not necessarily a film that was built for a kid audience.

Green also explained that the use of found footage in Earth to Echo has gotten a unique and surprising reaction for young people who see the film.

Earth to Echo will open in theaters July 2.