“Inside The Rain” Showcases Mental Illness In A Witty Light

By Sophia Chartrand Sophia Chartrand has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team
Published on April 13, 2020

Benjamin Glass isn’t your typical college film student. Struggling with numerous disorders including ADHD, OCD, and borderline personality, the bipolar student tries to prove his innocence by creating a movie that shows his day-in-the-life theme. “Inside the Rain” is the new funny rom-com drama that shows viewers if you believe in yourself, anything is possible. 

Director and lead-star, Aaron Fisher, does a fantastic job of portraying the highs and lows of a mentally ill college student. The “recklessly extravagant” Benjamin Glass is eager to prove that he is more than his diagnoses. When he is falsely accused of a situation and is threatened in expulsion, Benjamin plans to write and direct a short film that recreates the so-called incident to prove his innocence. As he receives help from a moonlighted sex worker (Ellen Toland), his parents identify his plan as one of his manic episodes. This makes the potential movie budget hard to obtain. 

Aaron Fisher is the writer, director, and role of Benjamin Glass for “Inside the Rain”. As the overall plot is intense and not a cookie-cutter, he says the plot didn’t come to him all at once, aka. no eureka! moment.

“I wrote the script over the course of about three-and-a-half or four years,” says Aaron. “After the first three or four months of writing, I got very down on myself because I didn’t like anything I had written. I got so depressed that I voluntarily checked myself into a psych ward for a couple of months to receive ECT (electroconvulsive therapy), basically shocking your brain into being less depressed. I did that three times a week and it was not fun.”

After he came out of the psych ward, the idea of a school hearing came to him. That’s where the start of the plot was born. 

"Inside the Rain"
“Inside the Rain” Still/Benjamin Glass (Aaron Fisher) & Emma Taylor (Ellen Toland)

“I had no idea what that would look like or who the love interest was,” says Aaron. “The more I worked on the script the more autobiographical it became. At first, I think it was an unconscious effort to tell my own story. But then obviously I realized I was trying to do something loosely autobiographical.”

Aaron explains how he and Benjamin share similar feelings and traits. Like Benjamin, the director was craving validation that he was innocent and that he was a filmmaker. 

“Ben is different from me in various ways but we are joined at the hip when it comes to wanting that validation,” says Aaron. “In a way, by writing, directing, starring in and editing “Inside the Rain,” I was doing what my fictional character was doing. Making a movie to prove himself. But I knew that making a feature-length movie would never give me the revenge I was thirsty for (for injustices I faced that were very traumatic). But I chose to make Ben Glass unaware of this truth.”

He also adds that Benjamin’s film is a “manic delusion”, according to Dr. Holloway (Rosie Perez). As he may not know that it may not be a good idea to make the movie, a viewer can’t help but understand his reasoning because it does make a little sense. 

“How’s a movie any different from verbal testimony?” Aaron asks us. “So even though you can sort of understand his logic, you know that it’s pretty crazy. And also the reason Ben is making a movie is because, as I said, he wants validation as a filmmaker. It’s as if he wants to tell the dean of students and judicial board at the hearing that they are about to kick out their most talented filmmaker.”

Holding both roles as an actor and director, Aaron says it can be extremely difficult. According to him, he would be lying if he said acting was easy, simple, and fun. 

“There was not a single moment in shooting “Inside the Rain” where I felt like I didn’t need to work my ass off,” says Aaron. “And this involved a lot of emotional preparation. When I had to prepare myself for the role (aside from writing the script), I had to feel and embrace very dark and scary places inside myself. Mostly imaginary but some meditations on my own traumatic experiences. This was not fun or easy. It was very painful and a lot of hard work.”

While he was still writing the script, he was taking acting classes and constantly trying to grow as an actor.

Before we filmed the movie I did many weeks of acting coaching and rehearsals,” says Aaron. “It was really difficult! I believe in hard work because hard work pays off. And when you’re done with it all you do feel great. It does seem like it was fun after all. So whether you want to insist that acting is easy or not, it doesn’t really matter. Whatever works will work! If something is working really well for an actor then there’s no need to change it.”

"Inside the Rain"
“Inside the Rain” Still/Benjamin Glass (Aaron Fisher)

Aaron wants the main message of “Inside the Rain” to be based on its image, however, it is open to interpretation. For him, it represents his bipolar depressions. 

“You can be stuck inside the rain and be soaking wet and feel miserable, or you could be soaking wet in your clothes and feel very happy,” says Aaron. “In other words, given the same exact conditions, I can feel happy or depressed. For the most part, the times I’ve been depressed had nothing to do with what was going on around me. It had only to do with the chemical imbalances in my brain. I would feel miserable and blame it on real things around me, but I didn’t realize it was only because of my medical disorder. A “normal” person usually gets depressed because of things going on in life that aren’t going well. A bipolar person gets depressed for no reason at all. And people who don’t understand the disorder try to ask you ‘what’s wrong, how can I help you?’ But they actually can’t help.

According to him, the only way he’s been able to be happy is by taking medications prescribed by a psychiatrist and through talk therapy with his therapist.

“I’ve been told by an expert that treating someone with bipolar is 85% medications and 15% talk therapy,” says Aaron. “It’s truly a medical condition and if you’re really depressed, someone telling you you gotta snap out of it just makes it hurt more. It would be like telling someone who just broke their leg, “snap out of it and start running, don’t limp!” It’s just with bipolar depression and/or mania the injury is invisible to the naked eye and so of course people don’t understand how they can be helpful and often make things worse.”

“Inside the Rain” is now streaming on Prime Video. Watch the full-length movie here

By Sophia Chartrand Sophia Chartrand has been verified by Muck Rack's editorial team

Journalist verified by Muck Rack verified

Sophia Chartrand is an Events Columnist at Grit Daily.

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