Check Out David’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to David.

Hi David, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I was lucky enough to find my purpose early on. I think I always knew I wanted to pursue a career in the arts, I just sorta fell into it naturally. We were a movie household growing up, my parents showed me all the classic monster movies, black-and-white detective films, ‘50s musicals, Hitchcock thrillers, and courtroom dramas. I fell in love with the style of Hanna-Barbera Saturday morning cartoons as well as Disney’s Golden Age and Renaissance Eras. My love for movies expanded when I discovered Steven Spielberg and expanded even further when my elementary school friends and I snuck a copy of the “Resident Evil” onto our camping trip, my first rated R film. My takeaway as an impressionable kid was, how the heck did they make that?! Why do I care so much about these characters and their stories? Why am I laughing and crying and feeling emotions I’ve never felt before? And, how do I create this myself?

I saw film as the perfect artistic medium that would allow me to tell the types of stories I wanted to tell. However, because I grew up drawing before picking up a camera, I started my journey in animation. After several years I shifted into live action. Relearning an art form from the ground up was a whole different challenge in itself, but it was interesting to see which skills transferred over and which didn’t. I filmed pretty much everything under the sun. I started my film journey recording musicians and their concerts, then moved on to shooting documentaries, had a close collaboration with Jamie Foxx and his team as their personal videographer and then shifted my focus to narratives and features.

I’ve gotten to where I am today because of the great friends that I’ve surrounded myself with, the talented artists that push me to become a better creative, the mentors who’ve shared their wisdom with me, my supportive parents that always encouraged my artistic ventures, and the people who’ve put their trust in me and who’ve taken a chance on my work. I am eternally grateful to all of them.

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?
I don’t think it’s ever a smooth road for an artist. There have been many obstacles I’ve had to overcome, but one of the more difficult ones has been finding the confidence to explore the genres and stories that I want to tell. I always want to ruffle some feathers and go against the grain, tell the stories people are afraid to share. I always want to find some way to challenge the status quo. But to do so, I’ve had to radically shift my mindset. I’ve had to learn to not be so dependent on external validation. I’ve had to completely let go of fear, which basically goes against everything the mind is hardwired to do.

It’s mostly been a matter of building the confidence in my taste and talents as an artist to tell these types of stories, plus, spending the necessary time it takes to develop my own work to a level where I’m able to defend it. This has been the most challenging obstacle but also the most rewarding. This mindset provides me the opportunity to share these personal stories and to really explore the absurdities the world has to offer, and discuss important topics that have a real cultural impact in society. Those are the stories I want to tell.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m a writer-director based out in Hollywood. I specialize in stories that are grounded in reality, a bit dark and gritty, but with comedic touches and a dash of the surreal to help push the idea in a new and entertaining way. I’ve been writing for the past six years now and to be honest, I’m quite proud of the stories and scripts I’ve been able to create. Each one has its own distinct identity, all curated from my own experiences. But it’s really the final product that I’m most proud of. Seeing my words printed out on the page and emotionally moving a reader. That’s what makes it all worth it in the end. It really is magical.

As an artist, my goal is to always pull inspiration from my own life, mix it into a blender, and create something new and entertaining with it. What sets me apart from other artists is how I grew up. Being adopted, I view the world through a uniquely specific lens, almost like seeing both sides of a coin at once. I can maneuver through society, jumping between lanes, and exploring many different communities, giving me a more well-rounded perspective on life. Add a wild imagination on top of that and you get some crazy awesome art!

I’m currently finishing a new feature screenplay, one that I plan on directing as well. I’ve been searching for a subject that I can really sink my teeth into, and I’ve landed on the world of music. Funny how that works out, circling all the way back to my roots, to when I first started filming musicians and concerts. I love music with my entire soul, and it’s played a huge role in how I view the world. Unfortunately, I wasn’t born with the ability to create music myself… so I did the next best thing and wrote a script about my love of the music world.

Set against the backdrop of Atlanta, Georgia, I wanted to write a coming of age story about young love, the American dream, and the obsessive and destructive nature of an artist’s ambition. A story filled with colorful characters that attack every angle of class struggle, race relations, and the universal theme of found family, really just everything that is important to me and my own experience.

This project is bigger than me, my personal love letter to music. I’m so proud of this script and I can’t wait to share it with the world.

What matters most to you?
What matters most to me is telling stories from the point of view of the outcast. I grew up always feeling like I didn’t really belong, like an outsider, this was a real struggle for me. But over time, I discovered it was the greatest experience I could have had. Because of it, I’m able to look at the world as an observer, allowing me to pull inspiration from many different groups of people and environments and inject those experiences into my own stories. I’ve learned to embrace my place in the world and use it to my advantage, especially when I create.

It’s funny, I’ve found that the more that I create, the more I can see how all of my projects gravitate toward the exact same theme. There’s a throughline to all of it, which is why it matters so much to me. I feel like it’s my duty as a storyteller and human to create the most authentic version of these ideas because I’m not just telling my story, I’m telling the stories of so many other people that feel the exact same way I do and are just looking for somewhere to belong. It’s incredibly important to me to tell these stories with a raw and unfiltered point of view because, if I don’t, who else will?

I always tend to circle back to the theme of found family, crafting stories with characters that struggle to find where they belong. Concepts that reflect my own journey through life. I think at some level every person struggles with their own identity, trying to figure out where they belong. I want to take an audience on that journey, searching for belonging and mirroring their own experiences.

Why do I create? I create because I have to, it’s who I am. But my drive, my “why,” is to fulfill a promise I made to my younger self, a kid who never quite fit in, who never could imagine a career in the arts. I want to show my eight-year-old self that his dream to one day be a Hollywood movie director is possible. And, most importantly, I just want to make him proud.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.david-mazur.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/david.c.mazur/?hl=en

Image Credits
Per Bernal, Isaak Morin, Lila Seeley,