Brooklyn native Alec Moore crossed his interest in science with his passion for filmmaking in his latest project, the romantic comedy “Advanced Chemistry.”
“I wrote the script based on real science that I found out about, which is that there are two species of voles, and one is naturally monogamous, and one is naturally polygamous. Scientists found out that by controlling chemical injections to their brains, involving oxytocin and vasopressin, they were able to flip flop them,” said Moore. “They can make monogamous voles polygamous, and vice versa. And I was like, ‘Well, that’s really interesting. What if they could do this to humans?’ That’s where I got the idea for a scientist who’s working in this space and trying to develop a compound, and he loves the idea of love.”
Moore wrote the first draft of the script in 2013 while pursuing an MFA in screenwriting at University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA). The initial plot revolved around a straight male protagonist and his friend, another straight man who struggled with cheating on his wife.
When Moore revisited the script with the director, Etana Jacobson, Moore said Jacobson felt the story would be more compelling if the couple were women. Moore joked that the finished product is “like ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ meets ‘The 40-year-old Virgin’ but less white and more gay.”
The script originated at a script-writing competition, with the impetus to “make science sexy,” Moore said. Though the script didn’t win, Moore kept returning to it as a viable project he wanted to make. After years of writing movies that never got made, Moore expressed dismay at the state of the industry, where selling scripts doesn’t always mean they get made.
“It began with me feeling powerless in the industry and feeling like we should try to create our own work. If people aren’t going to pay me, I’m going to…
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