William H. Macy returns to the Sundance Film Festival in 2014 as the director of Rudderless, the closing night film, and recently spoke about casting former Disney star/pop singer Selena Gomez in the musical drama.

Macy has been to the Sundance Film Festival a number of times as an actor -- most recently with The Sessions then The Surrogate in 2012. He goes back to Utah in January making his feature film directorial debut, and told Speakeasy he is now “hooked” and wants to direct again as soon as possible.

The director filmed Rudderless in Oklahoma City in 25 days, which coincided with his hiatus from the Showtime series Shameless. The film is about a grieving father’s downfall and life-changing decision to form a rock band in the hope of finding some catharsis after he finds a box of demo tapes and lyrics by his deceased son. It explores both gun violence and music, and stars Billy Crudup, Selena Gomez, Anton Yelchin, Felicity Huffman and Macy.

Speaking about getting Gomez on board for the project, Macy said "We asked her. It was perfect casting. That kid can act."

"She's the real deal. I was very impressed. She's a very talented young woman," he added. "Selena's in three scenes so she's in and out very quickly. She showed up at Charlton's [Pettus - the engineer and music co-writer] studio to record her song, and I said what do you think of it? She said, 'I haven't heard it yet.' I said, we didn't sing you the song? And we didn't. That woman listened to the song three times and then sang it beautifully."

The Sundace Film Festival runs from Jan. 16-26 in Park City, Utah. Gomez has a concert on the last day of the festival in Kuala Lumpur, MY, part of her Stars Dance world tour.

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