maybe you were destined to miss the bus

a new era of indie and entertainment is just beginning

At midnight, The New York City-bound bus left Youngstown, Ohio without my cousin.

When I first moved to NYC in 2015, Southwest had a twice-per-day direct flight from Akron-Canton to NYC for $29-69 one way. Within a year of moving, they discontinued service out of CAK, and I resorted to much more expensive flights on other airlines and/or the bus. My two bus choices were the Megabus (which went to Pittsburgh and was still $20+ of tolls and 60-75 min drive for my parents each way to get me and broke down more often than not) or the Great Wall Bus Co which stayed on I-80 and dropped at a gas station 15 minutes from my parents house.

I am about 90% sure that their passenger service was truly an undercover operation to buy cheap cigarettes in Ohio and take them back to New York City for a profit, but I don’t want to be sued for defamation and I have nothing to back that up other than friend who have taken the bus also saying that. Either way, with the quirks of the service like no on-board washroom, Chinese restaurant smiley face take-out bags on each seat, and only one quick rest stop for 10 minutes (and not a minute more or you are left behind), it was the most direct bus ride to and from my parents small town of Newton Falls, OH to New York City.

That was, until the night my cousin took the bus to come stay the weekend in New York City with my mom and I. We had 9 AM rides booked for Soul Cycle, which was perfect since the bus would get in between 6 and 7 AM. Little did I know, Chris never made it on the bus. He drove around the parking lot in Ohio, confused by the fact there were two buses, and the bus left without him.

While I was fast asleep, dreaming of ups and downs and side to sides in the next morning’s Soul Cycle class, Chris called my mom at midnight, unsure of what to do and unable to find the bus. Multiple calls later, the bus had in fact left without him, and said they were sending him a van. My mom, freaking out that he was about to be abducted and murdered, stayed up the entire night while my cousin shared his location with her and texted updates every so often that he had not been abducted or sold into prostitution or whatever other horrors can happen ending up in a van at midnight.

At the rest stop, the van had caught up with the bus, and Chris boarded the bus. For context, when I opened up my snapchat on the bus, we were going 90 miles per hour on I-80 (where the speed limit is 65-70), so I can only imagine how fast the van was going to catch up with the bus. He made it safe and sound, but Soul Cycle was far from ideal after spending the whole night wondering if this was the last night of his life.

For many filmmakers, writers, actors, and artists, the film industry feels like this big bus that only some people on, and then sped as fast as possible, leaving a lot of people behind. The bus sped as quickly as possible to a destination, without thinking about the ramifications along the way, and we all thought we were dying to be on the bus, but maybe the bus was going somewhere we didn’t want to go. And now, everyone is asking, do I get in the van? Do I drive myself? Or do I even want to go to New York City? (Or in this case, LA?)

As someone who waited to fully dive into the film industry until Covid, I have heard more often than not that “I should have gone for it when I was a kid” or “I should have gone for it right out of college” and now I am competing against people who have more experience than me. “If I don’t make it by the time I am 30, I will never be more than small roles.” I spent a lot of time beating myself up for that, until more recently, as the entertainment industry has continued to unravel since the pandemic and the strikes.

Maybe it is better that I never got on the bus. Maybe I was meant to crawl in the creepy van speeding, unsure of how I will ever catch up to this bus, because never before has this van caught up to the bus.

I started writing a feature two years ago when I shaved my head for a film, and two of my pilates clients shared some fun ideas of characters that I could now play with a shaved head. After months of writing, I realized the idea was more than a feature film - it had to be a series. I structured the outline of the first season, applied to an emerging television producers TV program, and didn’t get in.

Frustrated, I put the series on the back burner for a while, but it kept gnawing at me that I had to make it. A few months later, I sat down with my friend Cat in the workspace of my Rockaway apartment, and she had a brilliant idea that brought the irresistible, “WE MUST DO THIS”, to the series. We started writing. And re-writing. Writing. Table read. Applied to Sundance and Moonshot. Rejected.

But everyone we shared the idea with thought it was brilliant. Everyone at our table read said that we had to do it.

And then the reality of pitching to companies hit - What if we pitch to a company, they option the script, and then never make it? What if we pitch to a company, they rewrite our idea with their writers, and we are shut out of it?

At the time, I was taking pitching and producing lessons with Alexandra Boylan, and she was experiencing something similar in pitching to big companies. Afraid they would take her idea, option it, and shut her out, she wrote a novel/book version of her IP and then registered it, that they would have to at least license her IP if they chose to shut her out.

Cat and I started writing a novel about the time I started diving into Substack. As we started writing the novel, I stumbled across a TedTalk by - Elle Griffin from the Elysian - “What If We Were Supposed To Release Novels Serially?” She released her novel chapter by chapter through Substack, citing many examples in history where this used to be the norm, explaining how broken the publishing industry is at this point in time, and sharing her numbers of how much more she made by releasing through Substack than the traditional publishing route, and how many shows and films have been picked up on Netflix and other mediums by building an audience here.

I am here, humbling admitting to anyone who is currently reading my Substack (all 250 of you, thank you dearly) that Cat and I are officially in pre-pre-production of our next project, the series, and will launch the first chapter of our novel for spooky season, aka October 1st. Our goal is to create fans around the novel as we continue into pre-production to make the series.

With the ever-flowing doom and gloom news of the current state of the industry, I ask myself every time someone asks me why I don’t go out and get an agent and pitch it, “Why would I right now?” With agents dumping clients and rosters, studios canning series and shows and slashing budgets and staff, it feels like the industry itself is a horror movie. (PS - read this Bloomberg Article about the new era)

As I’ve navigated the festival route the last year, one of the founders of Slamdance said that the most under submitted category in Sundance and many prestigious festivals is the “Pilot” category. But why stop at the pilot, if many networks and streamers are consolidating and trying to spend less money?

Instead of trying to break-out with a feature film like everyone else, why not choose the road less saturated? I don’t know about you, but seeing tourist pics of beautiful spots severely over-crowded does not make me jump on booking a flight. I enjoy the road less traveled, unless there are bears, or other big-can-kill-me creatures.

The more I started to ponder this, and talking about making the pilot, my producing mentor (who has produced and written multiple films that have been at TIFF/Slamdance/etc) asked me, “Why don’t you figure out how to make the first season?” He is currently making the full series, independently, and then plans to sell and/or license the rights to streamers? With the void of content looming as the streamers and networks run out of new seasons from the strikes and consolidations, they will NEED new content to keep subscribers. They would much rather license a show for 1 million, than pay $1-3 million per episode to make it themselves.

Best advice I ever got from a filmmaker who has been to Sundance, met with big execs in Hollywood, etc: BE YOUR OWN STUDIO. If you function and act like your own studio without waiting on people, eventually people want to get on the moving train.

We are entering new territory, where few have tried this yet, and no one knows exactly how to handle it, but that is where the most opportunity lies. In case you missed it, Mark Duplass self-financed the first season of his new series, Penelope, because none of the studios would make it and he had a gut feeling that it needed to be made. Instead of selling the show to a single streamer or network, and let the fate of the next season rest in their hands, he decided to license it territory by territory, season by season (which he has said is a lot of work) but the TEAM gets to decide if the next season gets made, not an executive.

So maybe, I was supposed to miss the bus. I was destined to miss the bus so that I didn’t continue down the traditional route (that is quickly changing), and to listen to the little voice and gut feeling inside of me that has said “Do it.”

With the switch to self-tapes, and the increase on auditions for the decrease on return, I have started asking myself, “Is this the best way?” If I am dedicating 10+ hours a week to auditions, how do I possibly have time to build an audience, write, produce, get projects off the ground, and train to deliver on set?

Do auditions build some gatekeeper relationships? Yes.

Do you build an audience? Not unless you book it. Ouch.

Maybe you missed the bus, and you feel like it is too late, or frustrating, but what if it happened because you were meant to get “there” some other wild, crazy, maybe slightly sketchy way that makes an irresistible story?

Maybe… you get to trail blaze a new path that has not yet been forged, or taken by few.

Or, as Cat says, “By any means necessary, tell the story” (and subscribe to her Substack while you’re at it).

PS -We will be releasing the first chapter of our novel to paid subscribers (but all free subscribers will receive the prologue and a few chapters for free) beginning October 1st. If you are willing to share my writing with someone who you think would resonate, that would mean so much to Cat & I as we build our path to making the series!

PPS - Shredded is coming to NYC! We finally get to premiere in Rockaway at the Rockaway Film Festival, where we filmed Shredded.

Sunday, September 29th at 4:30 PM - You can get FREE tickets here.

What daring idea will you embark on next? Share below - let’s inspire one another to do the impossible.