From Passion to Paycheck
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"From Passion to Paycheck" highlights creative professionals who make a living off of the crafts they love. From film and television to music and every creative profession you can imagine, these entrepreneurial artists are doing amazing work every day, in fields that a lot of people might consider impossible. We hope you enjoy hearing their stories as much as we do. And maybe, just maybe, it will ignite creative passion in you as well.
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Peter Jang has credits that include roles in over 60 projects from CSI: Vegas to Soulmates, American Horror Stories, Mask, NCIS Hawaii, Seal Team, Westworld and The Suicide Squad. He is a stunt coordinator and performer, fight choreographer, actor, writer, director and producer. He is also the CEO of Simplicity Pictures with a unique talent in the industry due to his business background. And his entrepreneurial spirit was inspired by both his father’s own risk taking, and his personal beliefs in the power of art.
Anna Khaja is an award-winning actor, playwright, and director with more than eighty-five film and TV credits, including arcs on The Walking Dead World Beyond, Quantico, The Good Place, Silicon Valley, Madam Secretary and most recently, The Lincoln Lawyer.She also wrote and starred in Shaheed: The Dream and Death of Benazir Bhutto, which enjoyed an acclaimed Off-Broadway run in New York City. Khaja is the recipient of the Google x Black List Storytelling Fellowship, a Sundance alum, and was selected for the Mentorship Matters TV Writers Program and she recently wrote and directed her debut film HEADBANG, which just headlined the Flux Screening Series at the Hammer Museum. And so much of this came - not from sitting at home by the phone with her talent, but from taking a proactive approach to her career.
TV series Creator, Writer/Producer and Stand-Up Comic, Gloria Bigelow spent years in New York City performing live before landing on comedy specials with Showtime and Wanda Sykes and as a guest on documentaries, which led to her entry into TV sitcoms as a staff writer on the CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola. She rose up the ranks to Co-Producer and now has a new series with veteran comedy writer, Christy Stratton and Cedric the Entertainer. She has great stories about working stand-up on cruise lines and developed a motto which has helped her along the way: Don’t get fired and be useful.
Niceole Levy rose from double network program participant in staff writer to co-EP on shows like NBC’s Found, The Recruit, SWAT, Cloak & Dagger and Fate: The Winx Saga, for which she served as onset writer producer in Dublin Ireland, and worked French hours. She also wrote the massively impactful book for people breaking into the television industry called “The Writers Room Survival guide.” And this entire journey all began in the Mojave desert.
Nate Easterling got his start in film and television on PULP FICTION and with Wes Craven then went on to join countless shows that established his career as an editor. These series include - we were liars, the last thing he told me, vampire Academy, Castle rock, and the the tv series for SCREAM - He just came off a stint on a show that will be coming out soon called OFF CAMPUS - and is en route right now to his next job on a franchise horror series. How did a super rubber chicken bring Nate from Redding, PA to Hollywood? Let Nate explain.
TV writer, producer and director, Jen Celotta has most recently been directing on Abbott Elementary, The Paper and Cobra Kai, and she is widely known for the many years she spent writing on The Office where she rose to Executive Producer and also directed on the show. Her credits span from Home Improvement to Malcolm in the Middle, The Newsroom and Space Force and she is now in negotiations along with Marc Forster to push forward with the feature project she wrote 13 years ago.
Hymnson Chan has been working in Hollywood for over 15 years with over 100 credits as a stunt coordinator and performer, director and actor, including being part of the stunt team who won a SAG Award for their work on AVENGERS:ENDGAME. He previously stunt doubled for Randall Park, Ken Jeong, Jimmy Oyang, and Nico Santos. And his short film RISE OF CHOW, which he just wrote, directed and starred in won 10 awards on the festival circuit. Hymnson was also a recent Finalist for 87North’s “Stunt Design Showdown,” which highlights some of the top, rising Action Designers in Hollywood.
Juggernaut creative, Marc Guggenheim counts all of these mediums in his arsenal: Showrunning, feature writing, directing, comic book and video game writing, weekly substacks, novels and now, short stories. He has created, co-created and executive produced many of the dynamic projects audiences enjoy from ARROW to LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, ELI STONE and the animated series TALES OF ARCADIA, which he co-created with Guillermo Del Toro and for which he won an Emmy in the category of “Outstanding Writing in an Animated Program.”
Noah Griffith and Daniel Stewart lived in New Zealand for a year when they were the on set writer producers for the Netflix series Sweet Tooth. As a writing team they’ve worked from Staff Writers up to Co-Executive Producers on genre shows including Sweet Tooth, Swamp Thing and Stephen King’s The Mist and they did this after coming to LA from Minnesota and getting their break from a short film they released online.
Kara Lee Corthron rose from staff writer to Co-Executive Producer on TV series including YOU, The Flight Attendant, Kings, Servant and The Bondsman - but her creative journey began with playwriting in New York that took her from Julliard to countless theaters and artist residencies in places like Scotland, Ireland, Berkeley and Iceland where the experience got her just as close with her words as it did with frigid temperatures and Nordic sheep.
Will Pascoe is a TV showrunner and writer/producer whose television work stretches from LA back to his hometown of Toronto, Canada with credits including Absentia, Orphan Black, The Finder, Da Vinci’s Demons, Law & Order: Organized Crime and Shut Eye. He launched his career from Toronto by producing a documentary on Noam Chomsky and followed that documentary with another one called Lost Heroes about Canadian Superhero comics. With no connections in Hollywood and no film school background, Will paved his entertainment path by deciding what he wanted and making countless moves outside of his comfort zone to reach those goals.
Raelle Tucker came to LA from Ibiza, Spain with no film school education at the age of 17. After years of focus on the craft and the business, and stints as an exotic dancer, she rose from a fledgling screenwriter who got her first break on the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon HBO series Project Greenlight, to work on True Blood, The Returned and Jessica Jones. Now a seasoned executive producer with multiple showrunning credits to her name, Raelle has turned her passion for writing to novels - and the effort just landed her a two-book deal with Crown.
DJ Kara has been crushing sets at locations across the United States from the Super Bowl to Orlando Resorts, Seattle, Maui and of course, Vegas, for over a decade. She arrived in LA from Indiana with her target set on the music industry and jumped into the DJ world despite her fears of live performance and speaking on the mic. And it is this exact effort to progress despite fear that launched her full time into a career in music.
Multi-Hyphenate Producer, Director, Writer, Actor (and Translator) Jason Gurvitz has produced films in locations as varied as Columbia, Spain, Ethiopia and the Mojave Desert in over 100-degree heat. His exploits also include producing documentary shorts that helped to fund The Black Lion, the largest hospital in all of East Africa that serves 80 million people - and to expose the underbelly of human trafficking. Jason's work as a translator and interpreter in every scenario you can imagine from conferences and doctor's visits to service as a wiretap interpreter for the DEA also provides real-life experience, which feeds into his film and television career - not specifically for content, but to finance the full scope of his dreams.
While Paul and Eric do have separate achievements, they hit the public consciousness with their Oscar-nominated screenplay for THE FIGHTER, and their streak since then has not stopped. Now, after penning scripts for films from THE FINEST HOURS, THE OUTPOST and MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE, to name a few, the gifted duo have multiple upcoming feature projects including some where Paul is also the Director.
Originally from Atlanta, GA, Christina started her creative career at a fashion house in NYC before making her way in the film, television and commercial industry in Los Angeles, on projects as varied as WESTWORLD, LINCOLN LAWYER and THE GREY MAN.
You might best recognize Adam from his role as Gary Green on the series LEGENDS OF TOMORROW, but he has over 80 credits in film and television including a role on a Russian prison drama that launched his career.
"From Passion to Paycheck" highlights creative professionals who make a living off of the crafts they love. From film and television to music and every creative profession you can imagine, these entrepreneurial artists are doing amazing work every day in fields that a lot of people might consider impossible. We hope you enjoy hearing their stories as much as we do. And maybe, just maybe, it will ignite creative passion in you as well.
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