Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian Wallace.
Brian, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I started out as a stage actor in NYC. Never a name or anything, I nonetheless stayed busy (and insured), especially in regional theatres, and never turned down a gig. In that time, I was lucky enough to work on new plays by some top names writing today and grateful enough to appear in new plays by writers I’ve never heard of since. There were great scripts and terrible ones from both categories, but I loved it.
I always wrote as well, but secretly and on the side. I was shy about it and even a little conflicted. In some of the more “pedigreed” gigs I had, I didn’t want to be that person who said, “yeah, I write too,” after seeing our playwright burn through draft after draft in rehearsals, likely squandering some of their best work in “development hell.” Other writers I knew always took a shine to me as an actor, and I was too honored at how some of them considered me an indispensable interpreter of their work to then turn around and “compete” with them.
When I moved to Los Angeles, I gradually lost touch with my theatre tribe back East and discovered the theatre scene out here was extremely different from what I had been used to. I was older, starting over, and didn’t know what I didn’t know, which is scary. All I knew how to do was take any opportunity that came my way and create the ones that otherwise wouldn’t come to me. Since I had to re-learn almost everything, I decided to try to figure out almost everything else and wound up writing and producing short films.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Absolutely not, haha. I moved out here for personal reasons and did not have a distinct career path for in mind for Los Angeles. I had no connections at all and no idea of what to do first. What I did have was a lot of years on me, spent building a theatre resume nobody out here much cared about, as well as a rapidly advancing case of vitiligo. The only TV clip I had was 10 seconds I did once on SVU–and that was my whole scene! I didn’t even have to cut it down, haha. I might as well have been an extra on “Bonanza.” I was some sort of misfit fossil on my first day. I attended some of those SAG-AFTRA industry workshops early on and actually angered a casting director by performing a monologue by George Bernard Shaw.
The culture shock within the theatre community itself was a big thing too. Equity, the stage actors’ union, has a lot of clout back in New York. In Chicago, actors treat it like a friend with benefits. But in Los Angeles, the union is largely met with outright hostility by its own membership. I came out here in the middle of the 99-seat controversy, and in order to skirt the new rules, most of the small companies became closed shops. The larger LORT houses cast mostly out of NYC.
Add to this a graveyard shift for a survival job that played havoc on my schedule, diet, and self-esteem. My social circle wasn’t much bigger than that closet full of clothes from New York I could no longer fit into. So eventually, I learned that if I wanted to be part of the scene out here, I had to make something happen for myself.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Well, we started Fancy Movies in 2018. The initial impulse, really, was that my friend Matt Mitchell and I basically wanted to get more footage for the reels that we had up on Actors Access. It’s actually kind of funny because rather than just shooting scenes in our living rooms–that would obviously look like scenes we shot in our living rooms–we wanted it to look like it came out of a real movie. So that meant we had to make the movie!
Matt had an idea for a short film, I wrote the script, and we cast it and shot it in one day at a ginger ale factory. It was a comedy about a kidnapping gone wrong called “The Briefcase,” and it was accepted into a few festivals, including the We Make Movies International Festival in Los Angeles, which was a real thrill. It received a few accolades elsewhere and was ultimately screened at a legit full-scale cinema downtown thanks to the Independent Cinema Showcase, which was an indescribable joy.
We later collaborated on a couple of other movies with a third friend, Justin Dray, who is a brilliant actor, which have since made the festival rounds, one of them getting distribution. People started to come to us with project ideas, and we were about to shoot two more films in the same month when covid hit and shut everything down.
As the pandemic dragged on, however, Matt and I wanted to devise a way to shoot safely that could be replicated by budget filmmakers. In collaboration with a covid compliance director, Brandon Junk, we made a comedy, “Play On,” about an aspiring folk rock singer who has yet to learn to play. While our approach may not be right for all films, I’m proud to say that everyone associated with that movie remains covid-free to this day.
Building on that impulse, we’ve launched a campaign of sorts, “(Still) Filmed in California,” to celebrate filmmakers in the state who have weathered the storm. We have a limited line of merch available and will be splitting proceeds with indie film organizations within California.
There are so many wonderful things that have come out of Fancy Movies. We’ve met and worked with a score of other artists, Matt has established himself as an astonishingly gifted cinematographer, and I’ve become a minor expert on SAG-AFTRA paperwork. And we’ve both developed a fancy for editing. Because we treat it like a learning process as much as anything else, we’ve developed new skills in the bargain, and all for the cost of shooting a film (which we have been able to keep surprisingly low).
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
The best thing about Los Angeles is the amount and quality of talent available out here. It’s pretty easy to meet people who want to get out and do something, and that’s a real gift. In an age when everyone has a movie studio in their pocket, it’s inspiring at how many creative things you can actually make happen without having to ask permission of anyone.
It’s also humbling in a lot of ways. I wrote an election parody back in 2016 called “Trump’s Island,” a comedy about Donald Trump getting shipwrecked on Gilligan’s Island and deciding to become leader of the castaways. I needed a red-headed actress to play Ginger and couldn’t pay very much at all. I was actually a little embarrassed that I couldn’t pay everybody more. But within an hour of posting the casting notice, I had 300 submissions from very talented actresses across the city. And those were just the redheads. I was stunned. Being on the other side of the process like that, however informally, really instilled in me a renewed sense of solidarity in what we’re all trying to do out here. So whenever someone agrees to take part in one of my projects, I try to be the sort of comrade they deserve. It’s an uphill climb for all of us in a lot of ways, and the least we can do is provide good company on the hike.
In terms of negatives, I don’t think any of my complaints are that original–the roads, the cost of living, the signs of decay. It shouldn’t take an hour to drive ten miles, and when you’re spending a third of your day in traffic, it gives you time to wonder if we’re paying too much to live this way.
I will say I’m ready for us to pull the trigger already on the post-covid landscape, figure out what’s going to be what, and then stick to it. I’ve never been cavalier about the pandemic and think everyone should make their own best decisions. On the other hand, we can’t build the future if we’re just trying to get by day-to-day.
Hollywood invented the stunt man, you know. People jump off exploding buildings and orchestrate high-speed car crashes for the sake of a two-second shot. Many of the rest of us spend decades without reliable health insurance or owning a home or having a family, or–worst of all sins–getting older anonymously. And we do it because we want to be available for a Broadway gig or a national commercial or some other break that may never even come. In the best of times, this business has always been populated by people with a high tolerance for sacrifice and risk. I mean, look at how many of us are shooting without a permit.
Again, I am not suggesting that anyone be forced into something against their will. Of course not. I do think, however, that now would be a good time for each of us as individuals to ask ourselves why we are here and then act accordingly.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: https://fancymovies.bigcartel.com/product/short-sleeve-unisex-t-shirt
- Instagram: instagram.com/splashofwallace/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/splashofwallace
- Twitter: @fancymovies
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZ3qPnJnagv1un0jFTMn9w
- Other: www.actorbrianwallace.com
Image Credits:
Matt Mitchell Bohrer Jake O’Flaherty Albert L. Ortega Mikel Fair Independent Cinema Showcase
