Today we’d like to introduce you to Paige Feldman.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’d always been obsessed with stories and storytelling as a young kid (I put on my original plays with my sister and cousin starting at four years old, I wrote my first story at six and got my first rejection letter from a major publisher at eight), but there’s one pivotal moment where my obsession transformed from passion to goal: when I saw The Flintstones Movie. Yes, the one from the 90s with John Goodman as Fred, Rick Moranis as Barney, and Halle Berry as a sexy secretary. But the reason this movie inspired me to become a writer and director wasn’t because I loved it. No. I HATED it. I thought it was so bad that I, a 3rd grader, could have done better. And then in the credits, I saw Steven Spielberg’s name. Now he was an executive producer on the film, but I didn’t know what that meant at the time. All I knew is that I thought I could have made a better movie than Steven Spielberg, so that must be what I should do with my life.
And I didn’t waver until senior year at USC. I was going to get the cinema degree and was on track to start achieving my goals. Except film school wasn’t everything, I’d hoped it would be. I’d had a string of TERRIBLE internships. I was discouraged away from directing by a group of boys who told me I “cared too much about story” to be a director (the names of lenses are apparently more important than storytelling) and the scripts I had written weren’t getting any traction. I didn’t think I had the passion for the business anymore, so I graduated and decided to quit pursuing film. Instead, I did what everyone does to find themselves: went to law school!
I joke, but in law school, I did find myself. I found myself outlining stories in the margins of my PowerPoint. I found myself disengaged with school (something I always had loved before) and trying to find people to talk about movies and TV with at parties instead of debating case law. Walking away helped me realize that I’d rather have that string of awful internships and struggle with feelings of creative self-doubt than have a stable job as a lawyer. So I talked to the Northwestern University School of Law’s Dean of Happiness (true story) and we worked out a way for me to finish my degree (because I’m not going to finish something I started) and also move back to Los Angeles from Chicago and pursue film. This time, I got an excellent internship on the Disney lot, focused a lot on my writing, and got a job working for a talent manager. After a year, I switched over to an assistant job at an international sales agency and production company where I quickly became their go-to development person.
After 6 years, though, my division was eliminated and I got laid off. And that was the best thing to ever happen to me. I had 6 months of severance that gave me some breathing room and time to think about why my career as a writer hadn’t progressed beyond a few meetings on open writing assignments I hadn’t gotten and scripts I hadn’t sold and this short-form sex comedy anthology series that no one wanted to fund. I realized that I was waiting for people to say yes to me, but I’d never said yes to myself, never really took a chance creatively. And since I was all in on being a filmmaker (I’d failed the bar by 6 points – a passing score is 1200 and I’d gotten an 1194), I needed to stop being scared and BE a filmmaker.
So I took some of that severance money and rented an Air BnB, paid a few actors, and recruited my friends to be crew (I’m luckily friends with a pro cinematographer and someone who has his own production sound kit) and decided to film the pilot episode of that short form anthology series. And I reminded myself that it was okay I wasn’t familiar with lenses because I was ace on story – no matter how good a film looks, if the story is terrible, it’s not going to be successful (Also, my DP knows his way around lenses). And I got to work.
Turns out, I love directing – working with actors to tell and build a story is so much fun and so rewarding. And that pilot helped me raise over $7000 to film the remaining 5 episodes of the series. That series, INTERROBANG, had its world premiere at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2021, played in 6 other film festivals around the country, including to a sold-out house at the Chinese Theatres in Los Angeles, and is releasing on streaming platform SeekaTV starting October 13!
Since INTERROBANG, I’ve also written and directed (and produced and edited) a 10-episode romantic comedy audio series, HOW TO FALL IN LOVE THE HARD WAY (pilot is released, remaining episodes to be released soon), and was hired to write a feature film – WING DAD – based on the director’s original story. WING DAD is out on Amazon Prime now after winning Best Picture at the 2022 Santa Monica Film Festival.
Ever since I took a chance on myself, things are looking bright!
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?
It hasn’t been and still isn’t a smooth road, and honestly, I would worry if it had been. For starters, I primarily write R-rated romantic comedies, which according to pundits are incredibly niche and require A-list actors to be profitable (I’d like to prove this assumption wrong, but I digress). Additionally, my industry contacts are largely in the horror and documentary spaces, so no matter how successful I am with my work, the most those contacts can tell me are, “congratulations and good luck!”
But that’s just the reality of the business. And while I have my share of rejections from contests or festivals, a few “almost” meetings, mortifying moments (accidentally hugging a famous comedian when he came into the office to talk about a script), I think the two biggest struggles came from within myself: learning to fail and continuing to believe in myself and my abilities.
As far as failure goes, I’m a former gifted kid, graduated Cum Laude from USC, a fast learner (as long as there’s no physical challenge), and a good test taker. Growing up, I was used to being great at the things I cared about and getting singled out for my accomplishments (I was on Jeopardy! for goodness sake!). Suddenly, I want to break into Hollywood and I’m a great writer, but so is everyone else, even the people not getting hired. I’m no longer one in a million, I’m one of a million. And because I was used to being the best, I was so scared of proving myself to be one of the worst, I didn’t take any chances. I was so afraid to fail I let my potential success wither. I stayed afraid to share my work and put myself out there until I got laid off. At that point, I was nearing bottom. I had no job and since it was December, no prospects (Hollywood essentially shuts down after Thanksgiving until January), so I might as well try something.
So I tried. I shot a pilot for INTERROBANG. And it was scary and a lot went wrong. I realized I didn’t know a bunch of terminology (fail), I hadn’t storyboarded (fail), I forgot to say action a couple of times (fail), I didn’t ask the cast or crew if they had dietary restrictions before assembling craft services (fail). But also, a lot went right: I was able to communicate my vision without terminology, I eventually said action after prompting, we were able to get snacks for those who couldn’t eat what I had provided, and more importantly – I was able to encourage solid, exciting performances out of the cast and get them to trust me, to open up and be willing to be vulnerable. And if I hadn’t been willing to fail, I wouldn’t have had a pilot that was so successful it helped me raise money for the rest of the series.
I have learned to embrace failure. And even though it’s always scary, I know that the only way I’ll succeed is if I let myself fail.
Continuing to believe in myself and my abilities is probably the hardest struggle I have. I’m currently looking for representation, so all the projects I’ve produced and the work I’ve gotten I’ve done on my own. I have to be a one-woman show a lot of the time and it’s tough to hear the consistent drumbeat of nos (I literally have a spreadsheet of rejections and have recorded over 300) and not get discouraged.
I know I have to keep moving forward, but it’s difficult to not wonder whether there’s a place for the stories I want to tell – about feminism and sex-positivity in the confines of the romantic comedy, about Jews in love, about the power of love to help you achieve your dreams – and sometimes that all is too much. In those moments, I like to remember a quote a friend shared once: You believed in Santa Claus for 5 years, you can believe in yourself for 5 more minutes. And even though I’m Jewish and Santa was never my thing, that quote can push me back into level-headedness from a woe-is-me, doomsday state.
And second, on the first night of production for the 2nd episode of INTERROBANG, during a break, my DP (a different one than the pilot) came up to me and said: “I read the script and it was okay, but now when I’m hearing the lines, I GET it. And it’s really great.”
I turned a skeptic into a believer with my work and with my own belief in the quality and power of my work. And if I can do it once, I can do it many more times. I just have to keep pushing through.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m reinventing the romantic comedy for the 21st Century with wit, sex-positivity, and diverse characters for whom love isn’t an end goal but a fantastic thing to find along the way to achieving their dreams.
It’s not the genre I write that makes me unique, it’s that I’m trying to do something different with it. And my tagline for INTERROBANG – Love. Sex. Anxiety. – is kind of a tagline for my work.
For Love: Representation is paramount. INTERROBANG has a majority POC cast and HOW TO FALL IN LOVE THE HARD WAY (my audio romantic comedy series) has Jewish and Asian leads whose identities are integral to their characters. And my characters pursue individual goals, buoyed by their partner’s support. Because while romantic love is great, it isn’t a destination.
For Sex: No more Vaseline-lensed, gauzy curtain, power ballad moments. My people laugh, moan, banter, argue, and fart! Intimacy isn’t just about orgasms, it’s about finding comfort being yourself in a truly (literally) naked moment. And also, I love raunchy jokes.
And Anxiety: I’m Jewish, so laughing at pain is in my DNA. I want to spark conversation about difficult topics using laughter; stuff like panic attacks, fear of failure, or the jerk voices in your head. Because even in darkness, there’s always light.
And putting aside all the penis jokes and witty banter (for now), my goal is a little more sentimental: I want to inspire people who watch my films or listen to my audio series to know and celebrate their worth and to look for people in their life – romantic interests or otherwise – who do the same. Love isn’t an end goal, but finding people who love you can help you believe in yourself more and give you confidence to try something that you’ve always wanted to do but never knew if you could do it.
INTERROBANG will be streaming on SeekaTV (available on iPhone, Android, Roku, Apple TV, and web browser) for free starting October 13. One episode will be released per week, with all episodes available on November 17.
HOW TO FALL IN LOVE THE HARD WAY is available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, and basically every other podcast platform you can think of.
WING DAD, the feature I was hired to co-write is currently streaming on Prime Video.
I also am sharing my journey, from idea to premiere, in real-time on YouTube as I work to make my debut feature film as a writer & director.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
Making art and telling stories, when it comes from a place of truth inside you, is always risky. Before I discovered my talent for telling love stories and romantic comedies, I wrote horror and thrillers. I wasn’t as good at those genres, in part because my voice lends itself to comedy; I would make my writing group laugh with my attempts at jump scares – not because they were bad, but because they thought I was intending to be funny rather than scary. But the other reason my thrillers weren’t hitting was that I was focusing more on finding cool plot points and things to happen in my stories than interrogating myself and finding my own fears to explore and beliefs to challenge in my writing.
I avoided those things because it was scary to look inside myself and admit I had flaws and fears (the former gifted kid inside me). INTERROBANG is when I first started to ask those questions of myself when I was writing – the consultant I hired to help me work on my messaging for my crowdfunding campaign took a look at the ideas for my 6 episodes and told me they felt generic like anyone could make them. She asked me what about this show is going to be unique, to reflect my own point of view, and told me to find ideas I believed in because if I didn’t believe in them to my gut then those people I was asking to support my show wouldn’t believe in them either. So I forced myself to dig deep and surfaced the fears I have about being in a relationship. From that, I found the central question of INTERROBANG, a question I’ve asked myself for years and years: “Am I lovable?” That’s what each episode is about.
It’s a risk to expose your feelings in storytelling because if someone doesn’t like what you think is a cool plot, then fine, they don’t vibe with what you like. But if someone hates a story I put out there that’s about a fear I have or behavior of mine I want to explore, that feels personal. If someone says my film that’s based on a sincerely held belief doesn’t feel real, then they’re telling me that I’m illogical. I know it’s not personal, but since I’m putting my feelings and experiences (repackaged in story) into the world, it also kind of inherently is, no matter good intentions.
One also might argue also that deciding not to be a lawyer, to not take the bar again after I failed by only a few points, is a huge risk. I’d spent years pursuing this stable career and to quit a millimeter from the finish line to go after a highly risky career in a volatile industry where luck was just as important as hard work. And to them, I say yes – but to me, it’s riskier to live my life courting regrets by never pursuing my passions. The question “What could have been?” after staying “safely” locked away from failure is scarier to me – way scarier – than asking myself, “What else can I try?” when another door is slammed in my face.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.paigefeldman.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pfeld1125
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/interrobangseries/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/pfeld
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/PaigeFeldman-CakeFightFilms
- Other: www.cakefightfilms.com / www.interrobang.tv / www.howtofallinlovethehardway.com
Image Credits
Lee Jameson Maria Oglesby Q. Wyatt Grennan David Carstens Alejandra Fernandez
