Behind the Scenes

Dreamboy started as a collaboration and ended as a turning point. The script came from Meghan Golovinova, who had been developing material around the Dollars & Donuts circle and quickly became someone the team wanted to work with. She had a natural connection with Michael Martin, who saw her as a fresh creative voice and a possible new direction for the company.

At the same time, the internal dynamics of Dollars & Donuts were shifting. Daryl was beginning to work more closely with Sasha Boggs and wanted to increase output, experimenting with different tones and approaches across projects. Michael had a more singular vision for what the company should be, and the two began to diverge. A proposed compromise, essentially allowing different creative lanes under the same banner, didn’t land. Dreamboy became the project where that split started to show.

On the page, the story was a surreal romantic premise: a woman haunted by her ex-boyfriend, not in memory, but literally in her dreams. Michael leaned into it as a heightened romantic comedy. Daryl saw something darker in it, closer to a psychological horror idea, where the dream-invading ex reads less as charming and more as invasive, almost predatory.

Both interpretations made it into the production, but they never fully aligned. Early development included camera and effects tests in Texas, where Daryl explored ways to visualize dream logic, the idea that one space can slip into another without warning. Inspired in part by films like The Adjustment Bureau, he devised a transition effect where a BART train door could open into a completely different location, like a beach, using rotoscoping to bridge the two spaces.

That way of thinking didn’t translate. The basic concept of how dreams behave, fluid, disjointed, illogical, wasn’t something Michael connected with at all. It wasn’t a minor difference. It was a fundamental one, and it carried through the entire film.

As production approached, Daryl stepped back and offered Michael the director’s chair. Michael took it and the shift created a new dynamic. Daryl moved into more of a cinematography and support role, helping shape the look of the film while giving Michael control over performance and tone. The shoot itself went smoothly. Locations included the Old Ship Saloon, secured with help from Ray Revello, and the core team came together as expected. The difference came later.

In the edit, creative tensions became more pronounced. Michael approached the film with a straightforward sensibility, while Daryl pushed for something more stylized and offbeat in line with previous Dollars & Donuts work. Music choices became a point of friction, particularly when Michael insisted on using recognizable copyrighted tracks in a way that felt both obvious and impractical. Rather than stall the project, Daryl executed the edit to match Michael’s direction.

The film that emerged reflected that divide. More conventional in structure and tone than other projects from the same period, with flashes of the more surreal visual ideas layered in.

Dreamboy premiered as part of the Dollars & Donuts Extravaganza, a large-scale showcase that Daryl had built out with the usual attention to resentation and detail. After the screening, Michael made an Instagram post about the film that spoke entirely in the singular. “I made this.” “My film.” “My work.” For a company that had always operated in terms of “we” and “our,” the shift in language was clear and illustrative. It wasn’t how Dollars & Donuts had ever presented itself, and it didn’t read as a one-off.

That moment made things clear. After years of collaboration, the partnership ended there.

The film itself found an audience online, performing well relative to other releases from the period before being taken down due to copyright issues tied to its soundtrack. It remains available through the Dollars & Donuts website.

Looking back, Dreamboy stands less as a singular vision and more as a record of a creative partnership reaching its endpoint. A project where two approaches overlapped briefly before separating for good.