When did you start thinking about a career in film?
Pretty much when I was about 6 or 7.Ireally wanted to be an actor...or so I thought. I used to watch movies and then lock myself away in my room and recreate them…I was obsessed with soundtracks too, so I would recreate the movies, but add characters and scenes and of course montages to the soundtracks.
But I think the first time I ever realized that being behind the camera was what I wanted to do happened accidentally...I was young (18) needed a job and so I got one on a small film as a PA.
How did you hear about movies that you worked on?
I would just get some gigs through word of mouth and sometimes my friends were on the show or in the movie and would just bring me to set and I’d make nice with the production coordinators, haha. I grew up with actors and my family were all in camera and my dad was a writer, so he'd make a call and then they would make a call and then I'd get a job somehow. I got offered a job in a music management office when I was about 20.
And you made a brief transition into music?
Stayed in music for about 6 years.
Not so brief.
I was being groomed to be a manager....to be David Ryan Harris' manager, actually. I helped manage The Black Crowes...i started their fan club. We were one of the first bands to offer tickets to fan club members. We'd secure the first 20 rows of seats for fan club members only. Chris Robinson (the lead singer) wanted to see his true fans when he sang and in a stadium, you can only see the first 20 rows.
So you were exposed to music—how did you wind up with an Emmy nomination in 2003?
I had been writing some stuff and playing it for my dad and he was writing for (Daytime Soap) Port Charles that had a fake band and the band members were becoming part of a bigger story line, so they needed a songwriter. My dad's work partner suggested me—she had heard some of the stuff—my dad reluctantly told me about it and said "You gotta do this on your own...if they find out you're my daughter, you won't get it"
The nomination was for “Hey Sister,” which was actually the first song I ever wrote when I learned guitar. I wrote it about my sister moving to Texas. But I changed the lyrics to be about a girl who found out she had a twin sister and when she found her, she learned the twin had died.
Listen to Hey Sister
...I lost to a song about a dead midget.
At the same time, I was working on producing a show for MTV—a sort of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood for adults. It was actually brilliant.
Its been a few years since then. What are you up to now?
…Not much has changed...I'm casting a show for MTV, writing a tv show for someone and trying to produce two films on my own.
Why did you relocate to NYC?
New York is pretty much the only city you can do film and TV consistently
and i needed to shake things up. i grew up in LA. It was tme to leave the nest...at 32 years old, haha.
I prefer living in NY because in LA, everyone is talking about what they're going to do or what they want to do. In NY, they're just doing it.
I've always been like this: I can't NOT be working towards something...you just don't succeed if you're sitting on your ass.
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