Self/ less Body Double

Death is the only part of life that affects and judges everyone equally, regardless of achievement and power. But how hard must it be for someone who has the world at their fingertips to accept the same fate as the rest of us? What if there was a way to cheat death, for those few able and willing to pay the price?

These were the questions that inspired the makers of Self/ less, in which a dying billionaire with everything to live for uses all of his worldly resources to prolong his life, with horrific results. “The inspiration for the story came from watching those Apple presentations that Steve Jobs used to do in the years before he died,” says Àlex Pastor, who co- wrote the Self/ less script with brother and writing partner David Pastor. “The press kept reporting on his battle with cancer. So we thought: here’s this man, he’s on top of the world, brilliant, incredibly successful, and wealthy, and yet he’s running out of time, and his money can’t save him. So this sparked a provocative series of questions for us: what if this was a world where your money could actually save you; a world where, under the right circumstances, an average Joe would trade places with him?”