Conversations with John Handem Piette

Today we’d like to introduce you to John Handem Piette.

Hi John, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Since high school, I was always the guy holding the camcorder and recording everything. Every chance I got to turn a class project into a short film, I did, much to my classmates’ delight since my films usually spiced up class presentation time. I’d also gather (gently force) my friends after school and over weekends and shoot films which my teachers and school faculty were always super supportive about while showing my trailers during morning assembly and helping me throw pretty elaborate premieres.

That filmmaking impulse carried through to film school at the University of Texas, where I was inspired by the do-it-yourself indy rebel filmmakers like Robert Rodriguez and Richard Linklater, among others. Austin was an incredibly inspiring and freeing sandbox at that time for young filmmakers because there wasn’t much separation between the run-and-gun student filmmakers and the professional film shoots that were constantly happening. If you were passionate enough, you could easily end up on those sets as a PA or extra and learn from the likes of Tarantino shooting Grindhouse or even a TV series like Friday Night Lights, which in hindsight had a cast that went on to do incredible things. In those days, I was also an actor and went through several rounds of auditions for what ended up being Michael B. Jordan’s role on FNL.

I graduated film school in 2007 and premiered a feature film comedy called “Power Trip” that I’d made my senior year about an alien meteorite that imbues these college students with superpowers, pre-Marvel Cinematic Universe, and they do… “college things” with the powers. That whole process, seeing the film through from the writing to post-production, really exhausted me and taught me a lot of lessons going forward. The next logical step for me at 23 was to move to Los Angeles, I’d always been fascinated by LA and it was sort of always my endgame. LA was incredibly formative for me in my 20s, both as a human and an artist. I worked mostly as an editor on other filmmakers projects and got to work with people who had totally different perspectives and approaches and it really helped me to hone in on my own creative voice.

Two films in particular that I worked on in those early LA days each represented different sides of the artistic spectrum and the philosophical dichotomy between West and East. One of the films was a passion project I was editing for Faye Dunaway that represented a more classic and Hollywood approach to storytelling. I’d lug my huge desktop computer to her house every day, since I didn’t have a laptop at the time, and listen to many of her old Hollywood stories and just marvel at the fact that there was an Oscar mere feet away from me on the fireplace mantel. The other project I was editing was an experimental musical film by a Chinese American musician named Levi Chen, who really brought me up to speed on more abstract and Eastern cinema. We premiered our film Dalai Mongol in the mountains of the Himalayas in India, where the Dalai Lama’s temple is, and it was a life-changing experience. I joke now that Levi became my “Yoda” but there’s really no better comparison, just learning about and understanding storytelling from an angle beyond language and the written word, something more thematic and universally accessible. Looking back at that time, I think it was super important that I took a step back from my own projects to support other artists’ visions because it rounded me out as a person and as a filmmaker and really led the way to where I am today. I moved to New York city to change things up a bit and be closer to family and began working remotely as an editor throughout the pandemic. I made a meme during election week 2020 of the Avengers being replaced by US politicians, I named it America Endgame and it literally got over 40 million views in just a couple of days and was re-tweeted by the likes of LeBron James, Mark Hamill and became a sort of watershed moment-in-time for me as a creator.

Around that same time of the early pandemic, I’d decided to revisit footage I had shot back in 2016 at a California music festival with a big group of my friends called Lightning in a Bottle. I interviewed each of my 19 friends while we were in quarantine and we reminisced about the festival, our growth as people and the state of our mental health in a seemingly downward-spiraling country. The film is now a documentary feature called “Lightning in a Bottle: A Festival Story”, my first directorial feature film in over a decade, and has been winning awards at film festivals worldwide and most recently at the Marina del Rey Film Festival where we won the grand prize for best documentary.

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?
It certainly hasn’t been a smooth road but I think I’ve always been super mindful of the fact that it shouldn’t really be “smooth” if you have lofty ambitions and expectations for a successful career in the arts or film. I’ve very much always had the “marathon” approach to my career and am never too hard on myself when one of my scripts or projects doesn’t immediately materialize. I take it as a sign from the universe to go the pace I’m meant to and continue learning and developing my skills until that “critical mass” point where what I have to say and create as an artist is viable enough to earn attention and funding. I’m also happy and pretty lucky that I wasn’t handed a project or given funding to direct a film in my 20s that may very well have cratered my career from lack of life experience. I think we all get our shots in life, those moments when opportunity meets preparation, and in the meantime I just like to immerse myself in my craft…be that editing something fun or silly, reading scripts, watching movies. The hardest parts of my personal journey as an artist have been those vulnerable moments when you have a script you believe in and share with people, and no matter the positive feedback and support, it’s crickets when it comes time to get that funding. There are also always personal struggles, be it financially or health concerns with my mother battling (and defeating) breast cancer and just the seemingly declining state of the world amid this pandemic, wars and economic crises. My north star in hard times is always my imagination and trying to create something that not only gives me a reprieve from the chaos but also inspires many other people around the world.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve always been a storyteller and that’s evolved over the years from writing scary stories in elementary school to animations in middle school and then acting and writing scripts and filming movies in high school and college. I’ve been a professional freelance editor for almost 15 years now so I’ve worked on a huge variety of different projects from music videos to commercials, web series, documentaries and narrative films. I think what makes me unique is that no matter how different the genre or medium I’m creating a video for, there’s always a connective tissue between everything I make which if successful aims to move people emotionally, uplift and entertain, with a dose of love and diversity.

My latest film, Lightning in a Bottle: A Festival Story, is an amalgamation of everything I’ve learned and carried with me throughout the years as a storyteller and filmmaker. It’s a unique and immersive music-driven documentary that takes the audience through the raw and psychedelic experience of a music festival while also getting to know the inner workings of each of the festival goers and how we’ve coped with the pandemic and life since that transformative moment back in 2016. It’s currently in the film festival circuit now, we’ve won 10 awards so far and you can keep up to date with where the film will play next on IG @lib.film and the website at www.libfilm.com.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?
Yes, I’ve learned many important lessons from the pandemic. Not to set my expectations too rigidly on how I think things should play out in my life and career, to move with the ebbs and flows of life and just be consistent with my intentions creatively and emotionally. Also, I’ve become much better at face-timing and calling friends and communicating on a deeper level with the people I care about and love. That sounds like a no-brainer but pre-pandemic I wasn’t much of a phone person and I think as a result wasn’t as aware of how my friends and family were truly doing. It’s important to check in on the people we love, it can become overwhelming for closeted introverts like myself, but human connection, I’ve learned, is the only real thing we carry with us throughout our lives that really means anything in the grand scheme of things.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jhp-film.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jhandem/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jhpfilm/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/JohnHPiette
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/Bigtexx007
• Other: www.libfilm.com

Image Credits
Mallury Patrick