Today we’d like to introduce you to Cameron Mitchell.
Hi Cameron, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I really don’t remember a time in my life where I wasn’t writing. Even as a little kid; I remember in fourth grade my mom found her old typewriter, and I used it to write a story about two groups of rival monkeys that made my teacher call my mom because she thought I was “disturbed.” My mom, because she’s like me, thought it was hilarious, and she also liked the story. I don’t remember anything about it but knowing her she probably has it saved somewhere.
I was pretty aimless up in Alaska. There really isn’t much room for creative outlets up there, or if there is now there wasn’t when I lived there. My friends and family were all incredibly supportive of what I wanted to do, but I still felt lost. One night it randomly occurred to me that I could just…move somewhere else and write movies. I remember googling film schools, and the Internet told me I pretty much had to move to LA or New York. I chose LA because the weather, and just a few months later I moved there. I was taking film classes and meeting people, and after my first semester my friend Mari-Liis Userdnov and I decided we wanted to make a short film to see what we could do. That was when I realized how much I loved directing, and about a year later I realized I’d become one of two default producers at my school because we were actively making projects happen.
Now I’m here, two features, a couple dozen shorts, one production company, and a whole bunch of other projects later. It’s been tough, but I honestly wouldn’t trade it for anything else.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Oh god not even remotely! It’s been a hard, hard slog, especially the last few years. One of the things I want to accomplish as a producer is to make it easier for the next generation of filmmakers to get their start, because it feels like the last generation did everything in their power to close the door after them. We live in a country that has turned art into a luxury, and the pursuit of it something only spoiled children do. Nevermind that all those same people who think that listen to the radio when they drive to work in the morning, take their families to the movies as a holiday tradition. Two or three times a year there’s a TV show that every single person in the world is watching at the same time, and they all spend a week talking about it until the next episode airs. People paint to wind down, they read books to finish out their days before they go to sleep. Their walls are full of paintings and posters and photographs. Art is important and art is everywhere, so why is it so fucking hard to be an artist?
If there is anything I can do to help shape the next steps of the film industry, I want to be part of that. And I truly believe that a resurgence is coming. Audiences want these stories, they want original movies from voices that they aren’t familiar with. They’re turning out less and less for the big blockbuster films. They will ABSOLUTELY reject these AI bullshit prompts that dumb people and rich people are insisting on replacing storytellers. They mostly already have, but the propaganda hasn’t cought up yet. Bong Joon Ho said recently that the one positive of AI is that we can see how important an actual voice is, because it’s so remedial in its abilities. Guillermo del Toro was more succinct when he said, “Fuck AI!” to a cheering crowd. We’re seeing its limitations for sure, but we’re also seeing the folks who are embracing it and turning to it, and those folks, sorry to say, will fizzle out with the rest of them. And honestly? That’s fine. We don’t need ’em anyway.
There are so, so many brilliant artists in the world, and a lot of them are languishing in poverty in a system that was designed to grind them down to the bone. How many amazing writers, directors, painters, actors are struggling to make it from one survival job to the second? How many are unemployed or living on the streets? We’ve got everything against us right now, but as long as we keep doing what we can to change this awful status quo that only works for like eight people, we can upend it. We can make a better world and a better film industry.
I’ve been extremely fortunate to get as far as I have in my career, and I feel like it’s a duty to help usher things along. I couldn’t live with myself if I just made myself comfortable and then closed the door behind me.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I’m really proud of the core I’ve built here in LA. I have a truly terrific network of some of the hardest working professionals around. It’s only a matter of time before a lot of these people are known on the world stage, and even if I end up being a small part in their bigger careers, that’s something to be proud of. I see Emily Fletcher cracking everyone up in her commercials, I see Meg Parker and Matthew Robinson making bigger and bigger projects come to life, I see Andressa Cor’s name in Deadline and it just makes me so frickin happy. It’s like I’m in on a secret, but I know it won’t be a secret for very long.
As for what I do? Right now I want to make a few horror movies. I have scripts out in the world right now, and it’s only a matter of time before we get something to land. When you’re a writer, director, or producer you’re playing the long game. It takes a while for a project to fully materialize. You’ve got to do this delicate balance of funding and schedules and then about a billion other things. But it’ll happen.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Seriously, just lower your head and keep going. It’s never been more difficult to find a place in this industry, because right now the industry itself is broken. But it won’t be forever. Hopefully soon enough there will be viable alternative to what’s happening now, and that’s when the dam will break and all of these new filmmakers will be able to tell their stories.
But it might be a while. So if you’re just starting out, don’t lose hope. Make small projects where you can. Pick up another skill that lends itself to your talents so you can get on to other people’s sets. There’s no better way to network. Find a survival job that will let you be flexible with scheduling, because you never know when you’ll need to step away for a couple weeks to make a movie. That movie probably isn’t going to be your big break, but it could lead to the next project, and the next one after that.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lastreststopfilm.com
- Instagram: @thecammunist
Image Credits
Matthew S. Robinson, Ali Raza, Sarah Spencer, Madison Harwell, Tiffy Wang
