Today we’d like to introduce you to Melanie Lutz.
Hi Melanie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Every day I wonder how I got so lucky to be here in Hollywood working with wonderful artists, telling loving stories, and singing beautiful songs. At every turn in the road, no matter the choice, no matter the obstacles, I returned to faith in what my heart knew to be true, to be pure and grew in my abilities to trust in the gifts and talents I was here to share, and to show up for the necessary work.
My name is Melanie Lutz. I am a writer, producer and love activist who has done everything there is to do in the entertainment business. There is no part of the ‘idea to screen’ life cycle I haven’t sweated over, cared for and achieved a beautiful level of success in, mostly against all odds. I am curating, creating and collaborating on a love (in all its forms) global storytelling content hub, where we produce, tell and share new loving stories from different POVs, lenses, hearts and artists.
In this 21st Century full of possibilities I am at work to shift the media, entertainment and tech universe to another way of operating, one free of the constructs of top-down power through to a collaborative governance, a healthy ecosystem built through our collective heart. My experiments in storytelling collaboration technology, heart think tanks, art, ecology, dance, decolonizing the body, trauma-informed story healing, asking the question for my upcoming documentary series, “WHAT IF All Our Thoughts Were Loving?” my path, a way to grow an all systems love approach to replace the studio system, to allow space where creators are uplifted, invested in, where technology supports more collaborative models, where everyone is at the table, in ways up to now unseen.
Imagine creative opportunities where foundational health and wellness is prioritized for artists, their families, for the community, and for love. My focus is what I reference as an all-systems love production process, it is entirely unknown to me how this might manifest, but I experience it through my work and the renaissance forming in support of artistic storytelling that transforms our worlds by shifting our thoughts, processes and operations. It isn’t in doubt that stories are the way we heal, connect, and bring transparency and light to our experiences. At some point I wondered, if this is what stories do, how is it that only the tiniest group of folk’s stories are funded, that in success receive the majority of funds, opportunities, and profits, how is it, after 100+ years of moving images, thrilled audiences, things don’t favor the majority. And, where is sustainability, a middle class and more projections of loving storytelling into our worlds. There is another way we can consider today.
I knew no one when I moved to Los Angeles. How I ‘arrived’ anywhere is endlessly curious to me. In the beginning, every story I worked on was a Cinderella story, a Rocky redux, the trope of an unrecognized, downtrodden soul succeeding against all odds. It reflected how I felt and how the world felt to me. There are many stumbles and tales of innocence lost and won that make for funny stories, and hard-won wisdom I hope no one has to experience to succeed. We can make things easier and more meaningful for another generation of folks who will come after us. I want to find folks, investors, contributors, and collaborators who are ready to build a healed all-systems love network. The future is what we make it by being present and freeing ourselves of the past. A new way is here. Let’s grow together. Pre-Order the original documentary series to begin the process of transforming from fear to love, and always know love wins over hate.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Hollywood isn’t always a smooth road, it has been, at times, bumpy, pothole-filled, underfunded, and impossible to understand, with the main requirement to whether through a career, the unending faith-filled experience of holding on to what you love and a practice of easing on down the road with patience till the magic happens. I’ve been published, had one act produced, sold screenplays, written and produced tons of media, but I have not had a screenplay produced. It remains in my hopes to fully realize in the way that will be at once satisfying and door opening. Because I didn’t know anyone and whatever lived and breathed in my makeup, I always started a new company. Some of my challenges and experiences made me want to build out media businesses for artists, so I could know best practices and ease of deal-making and continue to explore what it meant to me to share the gifts I’d been given.
My first success leads to a fork in the road. After a year of working with a for a Producer on the lot at Universal, I chose to hire my cantankerous younger brother as an intern. He quickly inflamed my boss and was ‘banned’ from the lot ‘forever.’ I chose to leave with my family member. We are Sicilians on my Father’s side, and that familia shiiiite runs deep. It meant I would have nothing, no salary, no clients, no, anything. For a few days, it was dark. I had experience with running creative businesses, putting on shows, my not starting my own management, talent development and production company with a couple of actors I loved, a writer/director who worked with Jon Stewart from New York, who had ‘experience’ and a lot of dreams to fulfill. With no way to pay for any overhead or salaries, a casting director introduced me to a NY company that wanted a West Coast presence. We organized a quick deal for some overhead, a salary for myself and my now little B-ro assistant. It was a tiny group of talented misfits who hoped they could survive long enough on the sometimes mean streets of Hollywood to grow into what we all believed was a next generation of the Rat Pack. I quickly found a revolving-door office space on Sunset blvd. In the heart of West Hollywood. At one time it had been home to Casablanca Records, which I told everyone was Humphrey Bogart’s old-timey company, it was much later found out that wasn’t true, Casablanca was started in 1973 by Tim Bogart (unrelated to Humphrey) when he signed breakout band, Kiss, and grew to develop artists like Donna Summer and the Village People into super success.
We quickly settled into our new company, found some dumpy furniture and a phone system to pursue being Hollywood mini moguls. It was a lot of phone calling and meetings and many, many ‘No’s.’ We quickly found that it takes a lot of time and energy and money to catch the breaks. We settled into a community with supporters, casting directors, directors, other actors, friends, family, we became a tight nit crew, working together to find a way through. After one particularly frustrating round of final callbacks for a breakthrough where no one was offered any part in the film, we began to talk about writing our own story, going into an independent filmmaking mode to share our brilliance, and write for us to star. It was through these efforts the idea to write a home movie-type story of trying to make it in Hollywood emerged. We were already living the life, now someone needed to write it and share it on the big screen, The inspiration would become an independent success, the fiim SWINGERS through our work with two artists… Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau.
Every obstacle you can imagine showed up once we decided the script was ready. Folks liked the script but not commercial enough, Folks liked the script but didn’t want the actors to play the parts. We said, ‘No.’ Folks liked one actor over another to get the project made. We said, ‘No.’ No studio, big or little wanted to produce the project as is, so we started getting it on its feet and performing it, workshopping it, staging reading after reading until we finally got a way for an independent director driven low ball offer to do the project exactly as we envisioned it. We leaned on each other, we stretched our contacts base, we leaned into our friend’s apartments, and homes and nightclubs and restaurants to share a story of a young group of ‘rat pack’ like music-loving performers to laugh our way through the work of building out actor, writer, director careers in a business that wants more known and less unknown. The challenges of no one knows you, no one cares, no one wants to take a risk, no one believes in your vision unless you show them. Found us counting on the only thing available, sharing our joy, our fears and our triumphs for all to see.
This first independent project became a template moving forward, no matter the challenges, the obstacles we found ways to keep on going until something that never existed before, born of the imagination was realized for good.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’ve been writing, telling, sharing, and producing stories every day since I could write. I specialize in loving stories to transform our worlds and timelines. My relationship with the natural world, with the fertile void of silence and understanding there is more divine love and wisdom on this planet that has come from any of our human sources is a blessing.
I write
looking at the world in a different way,
never seeing problems only opportunities
for people who want to live in the truth
in a world that longs for authenticity
revealing the simplicity of love
in an era looking to transform
I am a Magnificent Woman
Who comes from magnificent women
And great men.
Who love deeply,
One of my unique gifts is being at the right place at the right time to say or hear the perfect thing to accelerate dreams of the heart. I am a connecter, a builder, a dreamer and a lover of life. Because of a NDE (Near Death Experience) I have clairaudience. It allows me to get a lot of support for telling life stories from biography, for calling on angels for support, and it makes life easier when you can listen into what is necessary to move projects forward with complete confidence there is a divine intelligence at work on my behalf.
I have developed many tools to accelerate my creative work and establish an all-systems love production process to tell stories to cultivate the conditions for an expansion of loving stories. I define these tools as the muses of mastery, the muse activities that nourish my artistry. I practice movement prose, a language of the body informed by a practice called Dance from the Heart, a somatic form of healing movement practice that fosters balance, energy movement and grace. I work in biophilia, the love of all living things, which includes ideas of permaculture, gardening, soil regeneration, herbalism, a community apothecary, storytelling workshops, growing in my stewardship and connection to the land and the stories she wants to tell. I sing songs and write stories with a community choir to activate more harmony and encourage others to raise their voices for each other and our neighborhoods. I work with ingredients, I love to create recipes I’ve never cooked with, partner with people who interest me, to co-create under new governance practices, to expand my ideas around creating what is delicious and harmonious for our worlds.
I reach out, support, practice community care and give what I have in abundance when I have it. I encourage others because I love to receive encouragement. I celebrate everything, including the small stuff, I tell people what I love about them, I do my best to reach out when I feel the impulse. I listen to what folks are saying and offer the insights of the heart. I’m proud that I’ve loved through it all. I found ways to go on when I thought ending it would be easier. I’m proud to have built, contributed to and nurtured as many ideas, people, talent, artists and companies as have been presented. I host teas to create community care, talk about ideas that matter and create connection and collaboration in its purest form. The world needs more and more love. The great work of our time is building out, curating, focusing, spending time, energy, resources, and finances on this part of the Media, Entertainment, and Technology systems.
I subscribe to Tricia Hershey’s The Nap Ministry. I believe in doing less and receiving more. I believe in energy exchange and balance in love. I believe in celebrating and sharing others’ successes. I believe not everyone is for us. I like to work with different folks, who have a passion for what is most authentic, true and beautiful in them, I like alternative POVs. I love to encourage folks to shift their POVs just a touch, to add a new perspective to be more understanding and accepting to forgive as often as possible. I believe in kindness projects and love activism. Most of my day is spent writing, imagining, and organizing for loving stories. I chose to specialize in loving stories because we need a new 100 years of stories that tell stories where we love each other beyond romantic entanglements and boring paradigms of the fear base, violence against women deranged and lazy storytelling held hostage by billion-dollar franchises. I believe in mentoring and uplifting and enlightening others’ paths. I love to grow and learn and being alive to possibilities.
The most satisfaction comes from doing what you are here to do and celebrating who you are, all of you.
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word “love” here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being or a state of grace – not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” — James Baldwin / “The Fire Next Time”
How do you define success?
Success is a feeling of grace.
You define success for yourself. Here are some guideposts I use for my work, impact and collaborations:
Did I leave the space, project, person better off for my loving presence and involvement.
Did I acknowledge the land, plant allies and those ancestors whose shoulders I stand on.
Did I make my community proud.
Did I co-create thriving economies in my wake.
Did I share, give, engage with my heart.
Was the outcome complete, connecting, and entertaining.
Was there a feeling of balance and peace in my work.
Was everyone paid the most amount of money available and possible for the project.
Did I answer the eternal call of the project.
Did I listen more than I spoke.
Was I challenged to grow in beautiful ways.
Did I deepen my understanding of our collective humanity.
Did I bring light and transparency and emotional depth to the subject
Did I reveal the beautiful nature of what makes us whole people, the shadow and the light.
Did my work uplift, empower, and activate another to share the gifts they are here to share.
Did we amplify the love quotient of our interdependency.
Would I be willing to work with that person again because we made each other better and our actions were full of integrity, honor and grace.
Did we find ways to be kind, to donate overflow, to pay it forward, to be a bridge so others might soar.
If the answer is yes to any of these, It is a success in my book of love.
Pricing:
- Pre-Order
- Original Documentary Series
- WHAT IF All Our Thoughts Were Loving?
- $22 for Season 1
- https://www.melsloveland.com/product-page/mels-love-land-docu-series-pre-order
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.melsloveland.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melsloveland/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melsloveland/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/MelsLoveLand
