Life & Work with Hernán Barangan

Today we’d like to introduce you to Hernán Barangan

Hi Hernán, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’m a Bay Area kid — born in San Francisco, childhood in Daly City, teen years in Santa Clara. Then when I was a sophomore in high school (Bellarmine in San Jose), I got leukemia and would spend my entire Junior year in and out of the hospital. I was home-tutored, I remember, in three classes and somehow that was enough to keep me in the same grade. Which left me plenty of time to pursue a new-found love for movies. Sure, we all grow up watching movies, but this was the point where I started to examine the working parts of one — I became enamored of the shape of stories. When I was well enough to go out and get my driver’s license, the first place I would repeatedly go to was the old Stanford Theater, where they played (and still do play) classic films. So when it came time to go off to college, I decided on film school. Having just survived a life-threatening experience, I was full of bravado — fates be damned, I was going to do something meaningful with my life. But in going through film school and coming out into the real world to do the daily work of building a career — I began to lose sight of what exactly “meaningful” meant. I’d moved to LA, and just trying to make ends meet can be a hell of a challenge. So I kept my head down and wrote screenplay after screenplay with my free time, as I worked in documentary and music videos to pay the bills. All along, getting more detached from my purpose — why I came to tell stories in the first place… that is, until I finally wrote something directly from the heart. It was a road trip movie about two teens who meet in a hospital and go on a cross-country crime spree. I got to the end of that script and thought to myself, what do I know about being a sick kid? It had been years since my diagnosis. So I started interviewing teen and young adult cancer patients — and applying my documentary skills — I would make a micro-doc about each one of them, told in their words only. That became my side project — until I met Roger Daltrey of the Who. He was establishing a charity out here called Teen Cancer America. Suddenly my side project took over my whole life. I went to all fifty states to interview young people about their cancer experiences. I named the resulting feature film “Cancer Rebellion” because that’s what it felt like — a movement and an act of defiance. I got home from that production and returned to writing; to find that the stories I wrote had deepened — but they had also become funny. Soon after my year-long festival run with the feature documentary, I was staffed as a writer on AppleTV+’s show “Life By Ella” and my episode (the ninth episode) won me a Writer’s Guild Award, a Humanitas Prize, and an EMMY. I’m better poised now than ever to tell the stories I came to tell.

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?
Pretty sure I addressed this in the previous question so you may want to skip this answer… but
Every project is a struggle — the gargantuan amount of work that goes into crafting a story and then getting it out and getting it made and having it seen — it really takes more than blood and sweat and tears to make it work. But the reward of having done it — and growing as a person — is greater than the fear of putting in the work and putting yourself out there and getting it done.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I craft stories that help people laugh through the hard stuff. And believe me, life is hard; but with the right preparation we can soften the landing — we can face the difficulties we meet in our relationships, our health, our families. The classic way we do that prep-work as humans is through stories. That’s why I’ve dedicated my life to those stories; because this is the way we envision a better world. We can build a better future — but first we need to dream it, together.

I’m most proud of what I’ve achieved through Cancer Rebellion and Life By Ella because through those two projects I finally made good on a promise I made to myself way back when I was first let out of the hospital as a teenager. I wanted to grow up to use that story to make things better for others. To me, it’s proof that stories work.

Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
Not surprisingly, I’m a bit of a health-nut. I drink a very kale-heavy green smoothie every morning, probably 64oz of green tea every day. As they say, I eat to live. So everything I take in has to be functional in some way. That said, I’m not strict. You put a damn good slice of pizza in front of me I’m not going to say no. But it’s definitely not my go-to.
Maybe more of a surprise is that I’m an also a car-nut. I have a thing for classic cars; their engines are so beautifully non-complex. At the same time, I’m not a fan of car exhaust — but hey, we’re humans, we’re allowed a few contradictions. That’s what makes us human!

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hernanbarangan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hernanb/
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@hernanbobobarangan2614?si=GKy_M_klJcTmlJMy
• Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1354348

Image Credits
Pila Boyd, Peter Caty, Hernán Barangan