Earlier this year, Daniel Horan BSc Pet ’98 was living the good life as a petroleum engineer in Saudi Arabia.

He was making so much money he anticipated paying off his student loans by the end of his first year on the job.

Then, life changed.

The oil industry took a down turn, and Horan found himself unemployed with nothing but "a digital camcorder, $15,000 in the bank, and a dream."

He decided to make a movie.

"This movie is a real life documentary with a twist entitled Big dollar Danny in Delusions of Grandeur," says Horan. "And I’m Big dollar Danny. I have documented my journeys and my life since the day I unexpectedly lost my job."

Horan spent seven weeks traveling through Europe. He cleaned horse stalls in southern Germany, visited a professional basketball player in Switzerland, ran into Richard Branson [Virgin Airlines] in London and had many other adventures in Ireland, Paris, Amsterdam, Budapest, Vienna, and Italy.

Then he returned to the United States, where he traveled and filmed some more.

He bought a Cadillac in Denver and started driving. He visited the world’s largest ball of twine in Kansas, almost went over Niagara Falls in a barrel, bowled in New Jersey, did stand-up comedy in Texas, picked up a traveling companion in California, and finally settled in Seattle.

Horan has submitted his "documentary that looks like a mockumentary" to the Sundance Film Festival and if it’s accepted, he’ll be able to add Utah to his list of movie-related travels.

"If I don’t get the movie into the Sundance, I’m confident I’ll get the movie into another festival," Horan says. "The movie is two hours and 24 minutes long."

To learn more about Horan’s movie, check out www.potatofarmers.com/, his website.

Although he already has other projects in the works, he hasn’t given up on engineering. "I’m thinking about getting back into the petroleum industry since it is doing well again," he says.

Mines Magazine, November/December 1999