Hope Lawson

Update: 2025-09-16

Description

This conversation could have gone on for another few hours. I felt so blessed to chat with a kindred spirit about raising the profile of independent filmmakers, Hope Lawson. Hope founded Takeout LA after finding herself in the filmmaking business. She also works for Gersh so this episode opens up discussions I’ve been dying to have on the podcast.

Takeout LA is a film screening series and it’s also a party, which come to think of it, is what this episode is like.

In this episode, Hope and I discuss:

Does Hollywood still get its drink on?
The origin story of Takeout LA and what the submission process is like;
How she got her start in filmmaking;
Breaking in — are people still willing to take those 345 AM wake up calls or is the issue the jobs aren’t available?
Making money after film school;
What is happening at agency film festivals — and the first use of hip-pocketing on the pod — and who is being signed at agencies right now;
Why Gersh must love her creation of Takeout;
How crucial her diverse screening committee is for the success of Takeout;
What constitutes a great short?
Los Angeles’ place in indie films and how it competes as a character in films;
What’s next for her — including, fingers crossed, a Hope Lawson film;
The platform that rises above the rest for short films;
If filmmakers can be a bit too twee with their films and what is “social chess”;
Whether social media has made film sets better or worse.

Hope’s Indie Film Highlight: FORMER CULT MEMBER HEARS MUSIC FOR THE FIRST TIME (2020) dir. by Kristoffer Borgli — Watch Now

Memorable Quotes:

My former boss told me when I started, I came in and I was just hungover…”if you get sober before the age of 40, it'll be detrimental to your career.”

“ I started Takeout right when I got to my agency job when I started as an assistant. And coming in, I immediately realized like all of my friends that do creative things, they hold these networking events, but it's all creatives. And we hold these networking events and it's all business people. There's no low pressure way for creatives to show their work to up and coming young people in the business.”

“ And I got a job as a COVID PA, very glamorous. It was my job to get there at 3:45 AM and greet all of the really happy people on this freezing cold ranch.”

“ For the first time in five years in Hollywood, I'm no one's assistant. It's great.”

“When you go to school for this and you're promised like this kind of easy path up, it's a lot harder to motivate yourself to do like truly grunt work.”

“There's the flip side of the coin, if you're too good of an assistant and you start feeling like, oh, this is where they want me forever, it's time to go.”

“You are always your first agent.”

“I think bringing young creatives into that kind of bubble where everyone's young and hungry now and we can't really do much, but once we're recognized and we get a little bit more power, we're gonna remember all the people we met when we were young and hungry, and we wanna make those movies.”

“So a good short makes me care about the people in it and wonder when it ends.I don’t need to know the whole story. I need to want to know.”

“ We do a q and a after it's just kind of me up there cracking jokes and trying my best.”

“The motto of me is I love to help.”

“You can cool kid yourself into no one seeing your work ever.”

Links:

Follow Takeout LA On Instagram

Follow Hope On Instagram

Some of the films that were screened at Takeout:

MIRIAM (2025) dir. by Josie Andrews

FUCK THAT GUY (2024) dir. by Hanna Gray Organschi

CONFESSIONS (2023) dir. by Stephanie Kaznocha

MY BRIEF CONVERSATION WITH THE DOJ (2024) dir. by Luke Strickler