Life & Work with Adam G. Simon of Los Angeles – Brazil

Today we’d like to introduce you to Adam G. Simon.

Hi Adam G., thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I came up wanting to tell stories, but there were periods when life was pretty unstable, including a time when I was homeless and still trying to write, work, and figure out how to build a future. I was actually writing Man Down during one of those stretches, so a lot of what I was living emotionally inevitably found its way into the work.

Over time, I was fortunate to build a career as a writer and producer, working on projects including Man Down, Point Blank, One Day in October, and The Dreadful. Those experiences gave me the opportunity to collaborate with some incredible filmmakers and actors, but the longer I worked in the industry, the more I realized that the career itself was only one part of the story.

Raising a family changed my priorities enormously. After the pandemic, my family and I made a pretty radical decision and spent a couple of years working around the world. Not traveling. Working. We became nomadic, living in different places and trying to figure out where we wanted to build our lives.

Eventually, that journey brought us to Brazil, and for the first time in a long time, it felt like we had found home.

Today, I’m based in Brazil with my family and have launched S2L Entertainment, a production company focused on developing international film, television, media and live events. A big part of what excites me now is creating international projects while also helping build bridges between the tremendous creative talent here in Brazil and the larger global entertainment industry.

None of this happened according to any plan, but I think that’s what makes the journey meaningful. The unexpected parts ended up being the most important.

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?
Smooth like sandpaper made of razors. lol

There were financial struggles from the beginning. I came up in a family of six, surviving on my father’s police salary. I learned pretty quickly that wanting to make films and surviving long enough to make them are two very different things.

Los Angeles and the entertainment industry gave me extraordinary relationships and experiences; I’m grateful for that. But it also came at a very real cost, financially, personally, and emotionally. It is an industry that is designed to use and chew people up.

When I was younger, Los Angeles felt more like a tribe of creatives. Different people, ambitions, flavors, but there was still a sense that everyone had come together because they loved movies, storytelling, music, performance, and art. Today it feels far more transactional and every-man-and-woman-for-themselves. It has become brutally expensive to simply live there, while much of the film and television work that built the city has diminished or moved.

I also think fame has increasingly been confused with craft and artistry. A lot of people enter filmmaking wanting visibility first. Followers, influence, celebrity, and the work become secondary. That was never interesting to me. I’m not loyal to “the industry.” I’m loyal to the work.

Filmmaking has always been global, so eventually I stopped believing everything had to happen in Los Angeles. I started looking for serious artists wherever I could find them. That meant traveling, adapting to new cultures, and actually immersing myself in the places where my family and I lived. I’ve never wanted to live an expat life where you remain permanently outside the culture around you. If we call somewhere home, we try to become part of it.

That has not always been easy, especially as I’ve gotten older. Starting over, learning new languages, and rebuilding community come with a lot of discomfort. But I think it has made me better, and it has definitely made our family closer.

One of the strange privileges of this career is that I’ve met many of the people I admired growing up. Some became real friends I value deeply. Others taught me that talent, success, and character do not always go hand in hand.

Celebrity is propaganda. Some people spend enormous energy manufacturing a public version of themselves to compensate for who they are privately. Talent agencies encourage it. In Los Angeles, you can barely throw a rock without hitting an actor on a podcast talking about blue-collar values, family, faith, or how they’ve become a better person. Rarely is that person who they claim to be. Years as a bodyguard for some of these AA regulars taught me that.

I met wonderful people. I also met plenty of people who taught me exactly what I never wanted to become. Sociopaths with a celebrity license to kill.

So no, it hasn’t been a smooth road. But difficulty and adversity strip away illusion. I am grateful for that. At this point, I care about belonging to an industry making work I believe in, with people I respect, in places that inspire me.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I write, produce, and direct, but writing has always been the center of gravity for me. I’m drawn to stories about people under pressure, characters forced into situations where who they really are gets exposed. That is the film I wrote, Under, which I am directing entirely in Brazil this year. That is the center of the story. Suffering and the purpose or utility thereof. The love of those kinds of stories has taken different forms over the years, from writing to television work, and to producing projects like The Dreadful and other films with my great friend and incredible producer, Luke Daniels. I’ve worked across different genres and different sides of the business, but the common thread has always been character first.

One thing people have told me sets me apart is that I don’t care much about credit. There are projects I’ve contributed to that I was never credited on, and that’s never bothered me. I also don’t put much weight on someone’s reputation, résumé, references, or industry mythology. I’ve learned that once you get people alone in a pressure cooker, all of that disappears. Someone can be known as brilliant, difficult, generous, impossible, legendary, or even kind, whatever their manufactured story is, but when things get hard, their actions tell you who they actually are.

Today, much of my work is happening through S2L Entertainment in Brazil, where we’re building relationships between Brazilian creatives and the international industry.

What I’m most proud of isn’t any single credit. It’s that I’m still doing the work, like a cockroach that won’t die. LoL. I am still finding people I believe in and still trying to make things that matter. At this stage, I care far less about being part of an industry than I do about being in the room with serious artists, solving problems together and making something we’re proud of when the pressure is on.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
A lot of people deserve credit, including some who wouldn’t expect to hear me say that.

I’m an abuse survivor, as a child and as an adult, and I’ve also encountered men and women in this industry who lied, cheated, manipulated, and hurt others for another inch of power or influence. As painful as those experiences were, they taught me a lot about character and the kind of person I never want to become. That said, sometimes the people who put obstacles or even death traps in your path teach you as much as the ones who help clear them.

My greatest teachers have been my family. My children have changed me in ways no professional mentor ever could. Two are grown, one recently became a parent, I also have a stepdaughter and a three-year-old son, so I’m somehow experiencing parenthood and grandparenthood at the same time. I’m a moron when compared to my kids.

My son Gabriel and I also work together professionally, and I’m constantly amazed by how much more knowledgeable he is than I am in areas where I once assumed I was the teacher.

My wife and partner, Larissa Andrade, has probably had the greatest influence on this chapter of my life. She’s a force of nature, a successful entrepreneur, artist and survivor. There’s a fearlessness and joy in my life now that wasn’t there before I met her. She’s taught me to find joy in everything and fear no one.

My brother Joshua has also been an important constant in my life. It’s unconditional with him. We support each other. Noah Dalton Danby has been my friend and business partner for roughly twenty years; we have been through thick and thin, personally and professionally. Joe Carnahan became a friend, mentor, and longtime sparring partner after *Man Down*. Joe is relentless about the story, and our writing sessions have made me a significantly better writer. Here’s the thing about these guys: they call, I pick up, and vice versa. That’s rare.

The common denominator in all of these relationships is that we argue, disagree, and challenge each other, but there is always honesty and love underneath it.

Most narcissists and sociopaths at the top of the Hollywood food chain want loyalty, allegiance, or subservience. To hell with all that. I need transparency. Tell me the truth, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

At this point in my life, a few people who can sit in a room without masks, without agendas, argue like hell, and still know exactly where they stand with one another mean more to me than any network or celebrity. I love my life. I love the work.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.s2lentertainment.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/s2l_entertainment
• Other: https://www.adamgsimon.com