Daily Inspiration: Meet Devorah Cutler-Rubenstein

Today we’d like to introduce you to Devorah Cutler-Rubenstein.

Hi Devorah, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Right now, it’s freeways, freeways, freeways!  Traveling to see grandkids in OC and Sacramento and living between homes in West Hollywood and Newport Beach is fun because it gives me a chance to grow my neighborhoods, just like this article!  I grew up in Hollywood… my dad was a doctor to jazz, blues and rock musicians, (I met Sonny and Cher, and also met Odetta when my dad took me with him on a house call); we had musicians from around the world who would stay with us as my mom was a member of a world music and performance group called WEST WIND.  We held meetings at the house to discuss important issues of the day and I was a young member of SNCC and VISTA, shaping my ideas, curiosity, and love of diverse points of view.  Mom and Dad told us “always trying to see the other person’s point of view.”  My neighborhood friends were the Preston Sturges boys where we played tag on an Olympic Pool sized lawn, walked up the street to watch Ozzie & Harriet’s kids in real life fly electric toy planes. My house was at the base of the Hollywood Hills, with no shortage of hiding places for 1000s of games of hide and seek.  Betty Davis had lived in my house at some point before us, and doing monkey bars in the house I found a locket that had been thrown onto a ledge, lovingly enscribed, “Toujours L’Amour!” Many days were spent in the foothills with my sisters and cousins collecting fossils, rescuing injured birds, squirrels, and sometimes dogs or cats from our busy Franklin Avenue and Camino Palmero Street intersection.  We raised numerous pets over the years, and buried many of them under the orange trees, which my dad assured us would help the orange juice be sweeter when he squeezed us fresh juice in the mornings before walking to school. Before discovering film, I was a serious painter (trying to draw my favorite animal, a hippo, in the styles of Rembrant, Cezanne or VanGogh).  Initially, I had decided I wanted nothing to do with Hollywood, having seen what my mom, a talented actress, had gone through. Despite her acting craft relying on truth, it seems Hollywood relied on lies. None the less, when I graduated, I quickly realized I needed to have a job-job. Teaching myself to type (well 20 words a minute) I was lucky to get my first job where I adapted classic fairy tales and voiced all the characters for a series of kids’ records, which I had to type first!  I begin to learn how to tell stories on film.  In high school, my sisters and I had done experimental films and comedy shorts, staring and directing me in first comedy-horror-satire: “Seemore’s Topless Mortuary,” of course that would never fly in today’s Me-Too, but, it was tasteful down to a bloody (red paint) paper mâché foot and a Lady Godiva approach to the topless part. I started understanding the importance of having a story, not just a gimmick when I realized even a documentary, I was doing I needed to tell the story of my own home, a 1906 Green& Green Architectural masterpiece, which was bulldozed to make room for condos. It was initially an experimental documentary with me running around under the bulldozers and setting up another camera on sticks (protected by a circle of meat-hooks my dad lent me) to do time lapses of its demise 24-7; I did interviews with neighbors and captured a redevelopment movement as “Hollywood’ latest housing facelift.” I went to California Institute of the Arts as a painter but came out a director-writer; my first job in Hollywood was at Fox studios as an Assistant to a Producer, and I got a chance to run around the lot at lunch, watch directors and after hours pretend the office of my boss was mine… it was inexpensive to print up a door label.  Eventually, I became a studio exec, all the while directing theatre, writing features, and trying to get my own craft and career as a director off the ground. Despite my early insistence on not being corrupted by the business, constant exposure leads to some contamination. 

After working in the studio system, I dropped out to create my own company, New Play Productions and later Cutler/Saxon Productions to be able to produce, write, direct theatre, and began writing for television and features; I exec produced The Substitute franchise, did a reality show and wrote and directed award-winning short films and studied improvisation and stand-up, which lead to be being a host of one of the first internet talk shows — interviewing industry folks who had dealt with illness and how comedy and laughter can heal. The last fifteen years, I have been teaching the young minds at USC, UCLA Extension and Columbia College Hollywood about screenwriting, directing, producing, and pitching.  

My upcoming workshops in Newport Beach on October 9th and October 23rd, are being co-taught with my co-authors of our eight-step process about using character to help you write more compelling stories: “Dating Your Character… A Sexy Guide to Screenwriting for Film & TV,” published by Stairway Press.  

I really enjoy working with all writers of all genres – but I find it often is the most fun working with young people — helping emerging writers and actors work with short film content to help launch their careers — with finding a story that resonates with their purpose as people and artists.  Probably, one of the most daring moves is to incorporate my lifetime love of the healing arts – and I am also getting certified as a Holistic Energy Healer and help people heal themselves with a very simple but profound practice.  I still paint, write books, poetry and even have a living room full of instruments where privately I write songs.  To help me be a better writer and to secure those coveted teaching jobs, I recently got my Master of Professional Writing at USC’s Dornsife College, Arts, Letters & Sciences. My short film “Not Afraid to Laugh,” about using standup comedy to survive breast cancer was nominated for a Peabody and was invited to be archived at the museum of broadcasting in Chicago. My husband (writer for Star Trek: TNG) passed away July 25, 2019, and so starts this new chapter.  He is still with me, just not in the way I am used to!  My process and the recent pandemic resulted in me being invited to write a book, which hopefully will be out in 2022 about creative hacks to heal trauma, grief, and COVID-related depression. My poetry and short fiction have been published and won awards in small literary journals, and my focus often is on changing perceptions so we can have more understanding and celebration of our differences.  

I am still producing under my banner Noble House Entertainment, with two TV series in Development and an adaptation of a YA novel. My books on writing include, ‘WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA? WRITING SHORTS” and as mentioned I co-wrote “DATING YOUR CHARACTER… A SEXY Guide TO SCREENWRITING FOR FILM & TV” with producer-manager Marilyn R. Atlas & literary manager Elizabeth Lopez. I love encouraging my five grandkids to be creative and there are many collaborative efforts, including a short play co-written with my grandkid, a comedic history of flight, she is obsessed with Amelia Erhardt. And another one, also ten, just wrote her first monologue from an unusual and comedic POV.  So proud of them! I have offices in Newport Beach and West Hollywood and hope to be filming in Naples, Italy with a co-production between Mexico, Italy, and USA in 2023. One of my most fun things is staying friends with a group of people who all met in 2013 at the FLORIDA FILM MARKET. We stay in touch each week about our various countries’ reactions to COVID-19— from Australia, USA, Canada, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile, we kept each other laughing and crying as we watched our world suffer, grow, and find new ways to stay connected. The weekly chats started with us choosing a silly theme and dressing up, but from that grew a desire to share our knowledge of the global entertainment market. We created “SEE U FILMS” to help mentor filmmakers and get different cultures collaborating and sharing each other’s wisdom through storytelling. WOW, thanks for asking… I forgot to mention my two best friends – Jumper Jaxon and Tsunami, my critters who love to cuddle and chat up their days adventures about playing with butterflies, hummingbirds and dodging the booming sounds in the sky.  I’ve told them, those are planes and they’re away, but Jumper still barks at them… the only drawback to living near the Back Bay… the airport in OC!

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a smooth road?
Collaboration is sometimes smooth and sometimes a surprising struggle. I learned how to stay positive and focused and how to steer clear of troubled yet brilliant people. It took a while to find out how to tell, but I hope to help others recognize the red flags.  Boundaries are important to master – and I believe we spend a lifetime gaining knowledge how to love ourselves and others better!

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I will say it is important to strive for an ability to bounce back. To quickly look for a lesson inside any disappointment and move on to the next big problem to solve.  I specialize in helping people recognize within their art – their purpose.

I love to say art is healing and to encourage others to bring some small part of themselves to their characters to help them heal themselves and I do believe that helps heal our planet.

I am excited about bringing some of my Hollywood hard-won expertise and wisdom to my new location in Orange County.   I will still coach in WeHo and teach but this is a whole new neighborhood.  Connecting the dots and people will be fun and I am sure surprising. 

I am known as a pitching coach who can quickly get to the “nut and truth” of your story – why you, and why this story, and why now?  And my secret passion is that I love to work with actors – so I am known as a writer/actor-friendly director. What sets me apart is my desire to dig deep with my clients and my collaborators. To see what the interesting and surprising “edges” are of any relationship, and be brave to explore those, if appropriate. (There are those boundaries again!)

I really know my stuff after all the epic fails — ha ha — and so I can look at any script or short film script or even a contract between creatives – and try to see where the connective glue is and help to inspire/even explain how to make it better – to do our best work as humans!

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love (most of) the people, the creativity is both a blessing and a curse: nuts can be flavorful, but you can also break your teeth on them!  Watch out for the “pitfalls!” – OMG — the food, the unique pockets of curio and shops and I love our cultural diversity.  

I do not like the traffic, the lack of logic to directions when traveling. I am saddened as are most residents to see the lack of care for the homeless population.

I like to travel from one end to the other of Los Angeles… I like to get lost and always find something amazing!  Galleries, little shops, eateries… fun parks.  Museums and many discussions with strangers make me smile and continue to remind me – life is worth living, even as a recent singleton in a new deck of cards!

Pricing:

• Short Film Evaluation – Range 250-500.
• Career Coaching Chat – first 15 free.

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected] 
• Website: www.datingyourcharacter.com
• Instagram: devocoaching
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/devorah.cutlerrubenstein
• Twitter: @DatingCharacter for writing tips, thoughtful articles, & book/TV/movie reviews
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9Fi8w-T8cc
• Other: http://ccwc.papertrell.com/id005100004/ For the e-book

Image Credit:
Photo of improv (courtesy of Sills/Spolin Theater Works)