Daily Inspiration: Meet Jen Whalen

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jen Whalen

Hi Jen , so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
This question should be illegal. Where do I start? The start, I suppose.

I got my start in broadcast journalism per my college degree, working as a VJ for a news show, all the while having an inkling that reporting wouldn’t be the final destination. I was too much of a comedy girl for that business, and somehow humor and strong political bias would sneak its’ way into my news stories, which is not how that world works. It wasn’t long before I was pulled to the entertainment business, a vision I’ve had for myself since childhood. I was the weird bossy kid that cast my siblings and cousins to perform shows for the family.

My crash course in film and art culture was my time spent working as an Executive Producer at Bicycle Film Festival in New York. It was NYC in 2009, a really vibrant time for indie filmmaking and art and the era of the pre-instagram It Girls. The likes of Leslie Arfin and Chloë Sevigny, the It Girls that offered a cool factor and talent beyond just taking pics. The underground filmmakers in NY made a big impact on me, and hanging around Lit Lounge and Anthology Film Archives only fed my youthful craving for freaky stuff. The director of the film festival, Brendt Barbur, was a plugged in Gen X guy, friend of James Murphy and the Safdie brothers. I was a kid in a candy store, with a copy of the keys. I produced film festivals and parties around the world, traveling and living a fulfilling brat lifestyle with purpose.

Flash forward to 2012, when the underground atmosphere of the film festival was suddenly brought really above the ground to Hollywood show business, which recruited me to work as a Writer Producer at legacy studio Warner Bros. I felt like the fourth Animaniac, stubbing my toes to shape shift from the gritty fast paced life at the film fest to navigating the studio bureaucracy of corporate America. Here I produced projects with the highest budgets I’d ever seen with the most famous talent I’d ever imagine working with. One of my first tasks was directing William H. Macy for a spot I wrote. Magnolia is one of my favorite movies, I pinched myself, waiting for the frogs to rain down on me. For the next decade I worked at this marvelous studio, flexing my creative muscles to lead campaigns and productions for huge shows in between frequent visits to the lake that Pee Wee Herman jumps in Big Adventure on the magical Warner Bros. lot.

A surprise detail worth mentioning is that I had a very time consuming side hustle going on during this whole decade. I was a bike racer with Olympic dreams. The weekdays would be filled with early morning training before work and the weekends were spent gritting my teeth at races, pushing my physical limits, only to hang up the spandex and return to my desk job come Monday morning. I felt like the characters in the Greg Berlanti superhero shows I was making promo spots for. I made it to the pro level races in a just a few years of consistent beatings punctuated by hopeful victories that kept me chasing the ideal that I was good enough to make it to be a full time bike racer in Europe. This candle burning at both ends taught me an important life lesson – that you can’t do both. You can’t have a high level career and be a pro athlete simultaneously. There was almost no financial support for women’s bike racing in 2015 and the fight, although important, was exhausting. I was hit hard with quar-mid life crisis burnout and I left my job and impulsively flew with my bike to NY and rode all the way back to LA to think on it, camping through the midwest methy ghost towns no one bothers to visit and learning a lot about myself and this thing called empathy. I came home and did one more race which secured me the California State Champ win. And I was out. Now what? I had made a few short films about the wacky world of bike racing and had an itch that wouldn’t go away to make a movie about it. So let’s make a movie about it.

Making movies takes time. So I went freelance as a Writer, Director and Producer under a company I founded with the film title – Cali Girls Productions. I’ve worked for fantastic agencies like Cause & Effect on exciting Hulu series like The Dropout, directing spots and working with Amanda Seyfried, or belovedly known as “Karen” to the millenials. I’ve worked with brands like Apple, Netflix, Hulu, Specialized and more in various roles.

I blended my athlete, comedy, producer and reporter skills to cover the first Women’s Tour de France in an impactful docu series for SRAM. I got signed to an agency and have performed bike stunts in a national Lexus Commercial. I’ve Creative Directed for brands and hosted comedy shows. The nature of freelance gave me the space to explore and most importantly, the time to make my movie. Cali Girls is an action comedy about women pursuing their dreams in bike racing. It’s a love hate letter to my time as a racer, and is inspired by the stories of me and my incredible, funny teammates, who, together, we hoisted each other over the barriers of a sexist underrepresented sport. Now making it’s festival rounds, the film has already received laurels including Best Sports Film at the Toronto Women’s Film Festival. I find it natural that my passion for creating visual stories and my love of the outdoors and sports has found a way to intersect. I’d love to see this movie fly, I think it’s really funny and special, unique to its’ kind. All of these details and chapters of my career have brought me to where I am now. The athlete mentality has helped me push myself in my career and will continue to be the wind in my sails as this damn sailboat makes it’s spaghetti sguiggly path through life. I love it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My journey thus far has been a vintage truck on a washboard dirt road. Thrilling and challenging. Requiring alertness, creative route planning and strategy. Watching for potholes, going fast on the smooth parts and remembering to enjoy the ride. Some folks try their darndest to define my title. The issue with this is that through my curiosity I’ve picked up such a variety of skills and filled many roles that I am not tied to one thing creatively. This I think has been great for my personal experiences, yet sometimes has presented itself as an obstacle and prevented me from being an expert at one thing.

The hardest thing I’ve done in my career is make a movie. This is the ultimate challenge, it pushed me to my breaking point, it killed my ego more than I think hallucinogenic drugs can. As Director and Producer, I had a lot of folks that I was responsible for and a team to try to keep happy and inspired. Making this indie feature film happen on a micro budget more suited for a short was a battle that I entered graciously, but I have the scars to prove it was not an easy fight. It’s a magical feeling when people support and get behind your creative vision and what was honestly one of my more psycho ideas. I felt for so long I was the only one that believed in this movie, and now there’s a strong posse behind it, pushing it forward and into the world. It’s like I always say, women’s sports comedy is the next hot new genre. Watch women’s sports and watch Cali Girls film.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a creative with range. I specialize in the Producer, Writer and Director roles behind the camera and comedic and sports related roles in front of the camera.

My work at Warner Bros. has won Gold Telly and Promax awards. I’ve produced spots for broadcast TV and also acted in spots on broadcast TV!

I’m known in the outdoor industry as a bit of a comedic host and video journalist. My favorite job was covering the first women’s Tour de France in a docu series for iconic bicycle component company SRAM. This was so personal for me, because when I raced bikes, there was no women’s Tour de France, and we were fighting for one. I’ve also partnered with Specialized to host and help produce a portrait video series on radical change makers in the cycling space.

I’m most proud of CALI GIRLS, the movie that I made with some of the most talented, remarkable folks that I hope to know and work with for a very long time. I look forward to making more movies and launching from my history of creative advertising into this space that I’ve always wanted to play in. Did I mention the movie?

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
In the creative business, it is really all about the people and more importantly, the shepherds who use their positions and power to take the flock in new directions. Without them we are lost sheep. From a young age, my dad has always encouraged me to be weird and creative. He told me in high school that he thought I should be a stand up comedian. As a career. That’s not something that your every day parent recommends, they want you to be lawyers doctors and such. That stuck with me, and he may not even remember saying that.

When I got plucked out of the dark underbelly of a Miami Beach American Apparel at 23 to go to New York to work for the Bicycle Film Festival, I was so grateful to feel like that was the real beginning. The director of the festival Brendt Barbur is someone I learned so much from, but mostly learned what it’s like to hustle and be indie and get support from big brands. He was the first visionary I worked for and it was super challenging and it absolutely kicked my ass but it showed me how hard I could go and it prepared me for those long days that were ahead of me in the world of show business.

My Cali Girls family who has joined me in believing in a vision to make a women’s sports comedy. Heliya Alam, my producer who graced us with her experience in indie film producing and reality checked me when needed. Giselle Gonzalez, a fantastic person and DP who I love working with and was game to get strapped to the back of an e motorcycle and driven up the switchbacks of Mt Baldy to get the shot. Kaylee Colton who tirelessly edited my film, and pieced together our story while we shared snacks and laughs on many late nights. Ace Carretero, a swiss army knife co-producer, camera operator, AD, and friend who has been by my side since I was making shorts with the Cali Girls concept, always game to step in where needed and give us a boost. Thanks to everyone who helped make our movie. When people started to get behind it, I no longer felt alone in pushing this dream forward. The weight got lighter and together we did it.

I’ve got to give it up to sports. Specifically bike racing. Being a competitive endurance athlete showed me what it was like to form adult trusting loyal bonds and friendship. To be willing to sacrifice it all for a teammate. This push through and show grit mentality has made me the high achieving goal oriented person I am. Nothing ever seems as hard as pushing through the pain cave at the finish line, finishing seeing stars, and tasting the blood from your lungs. It has given me a mantra of “Oh I did that, I can absolutely get through this as well.” Like, oh I rode my bike across the US, I can make it through this 12 hour stressful day filled with calamitous obstacles and come out with my hands in the air.

The mentors I’ve had in the TV space have trusted my talent and potential and have given me opportunities to grow, and that is so important. Karen Toal Anderson, my former boss at Warner Bros. valued experimentation and humor. She saw me for who I was and encouraged my goals within the space of our TV department and on the outside. Everyone I’ve worked with that has put me up for other jobs, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. The folks at Cause & Effect Agency who were my first team when I went freelance, that was a huge reassurance that I had made the right choice. We worked on some great shows.

Brands have a role in this too! As a creative with a lot of ideas for movies and shows, those will always remain ideas without the financial backing to bring them to life. I want to thank Specialized Bicycles and Jeff Schmidt for being an outstanding brand that has supported multiple projects of mine and have pushed the norms of what the outdoor industry is doing. We made a movie together! That could have never happened without the generous backing from this name. So brands, please invest your dollars in unconventional marketing. There’s power in making films and having your name attached to being the reason something gets made.

We are all fighting for opportunities and sometimes I think we forget to be a unit supporting each other. Together we are way more powerful. In the times of famine, it’s hard to see this. It’s every man for their own, competing for jobs, doubling and tripling up on roles due to short budgets. When we have the chance, we have to keep our colleagues in mind, it always comes back around. And boy, when it’s fun, isn’t it fun?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://jenkylewhalen.net/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennysayyes/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenkylewhalen/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAPkIbQJs10