“How do you expect me to create a definitive ending to our time together?”

Erik Johnson’s 61 Suns is a meditation on loss and grief, a digital elegy and swan song to his best friend, Stephen James Morrison. Stephen passed away on June 6th, 2020 after suffering a heart attack. He had undiagnosed enlarged heart.

Erik and Stephen met in 2010 during their first year at film school. They quickly became close friends and were inseparable during their time there. While living together, Erik shot all of Stephen’s projects. The camera never stopped rolling.

Many of these projects were never finished. Half-completed films and B roll sat on Erik’s hard drive for years. It wasn’t until Stephen passed away that Johnson figured out what do with all of this footage.

“I’m just trying to make the film you’d dream up if you were the one shouting out to the void.”

From short and feature films to music videos and home video, Johnson spent three years editing these projects into a daydream of a film that he’s desperately trying to keep from fading away.

Actor and voice-over artist, Peter Giles, lends his gravelly delivery to 61 Suns as its narrator. Johnson reached out to Giles after listening to his work as the audio-book narrator for Michael Mann and Meg Gardiner’s Heat 2 (2022). He was only asking for recommendations on other gritty audiobooks but Giles was so moved by Johnson’s story he offered to narrate the film free of charge. “If I could help you find your way through this grief via creating, what better purpose is there right?” Giles told Johnson.

Mann’s Heat (1995) was one of the first films Stephen introduced to Johnson. He explains, “Giles’ work on 61 Suns tied the film together in a way my voice could not. The pain in his delivery breaks my heart every time I listen to the narration. Stephen would have thought getting Peter to voice our film was the coolest addition ever. It was my fitting everything back to Mann. His digital pioneering influenced everything we shot together.”

The score comes from Alexander Noland, Johnson and Morrison’s college roommate. Much of it was pulled from Noland’s album, I Hope I See You Again, which was based on the trio’s time living together. The title later became the tag line for 61 Suns. Noland utilizes melancholic synths and somber chords to drive the film.

Johnson worked on this film with almost no guidance. He cold contacted several filmmakers trying to solicit feedback. Directors David Lowery and Alex Winter were kind enough to respond to these requests and gave him invaluable advice. “Take the personal and make it universal,” Lowery told Johnson early in production.

This idea of creating a universal story of loss and grief was in the forefront of Johnson’s mind during the editing process.

“61 Suns is a resonant, evocative memory-piece about loss. It’s emotionally powerful but also an artfully constructed meditation on the intimacy and frailty of creativity. Reminded me of Chris Marker in a very nice way (mostly Sans Soleil and La Jetée)”, Winter told Johnson after screening a working cut of the film.

“I still need you. I still need to talk to you, to pick your brain one last time, to see how you would have put all this footage together. Just give me a hint. I’ll take it from there. I don’t trust myself anymore. You were the one who kept me grounded, asked me if this was what I really wanted to do. Maybe there’s still a path I haven’t considered here. You’ll let me know, right?

I really miss you still. That’s all.

I love you, Stephen James Morrison. I hope I see you again.”