Life & Work with Keith Kurlander of Los Angeles

Today we’d like to introduce you to Keith Kurlander.

Keith, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I grew up in Chicago so I know about weather, specifically cold winters and driving on ice. I was kinda comatose till my mom remarried and I was thrust into the lifestyles of the rich & famous in Chicago’s Gold Coast when I was 16, it was sex, drugs and rock & roll from then on in 1968. After I graduated high school I drove Yellow and Checker taxi cabs, Good Humor and Tastee Freeze ice cream trucks, studied Yoga and Martial Arts, taught Yoga for a year at the Center for Creative Consciousness before moving to Kauai on a spiritual quest to crystalize my spirit. At that time I lived in a tent, did a lot of fasting, lived in Kalalau valley for 3 months where everyone ran around naked on one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, when I wasn’t fasting I was living on what I could pick papayas, coconuts, bananas, mangos, macadamia nuts etc. During this time I was doing yoga, swimming in the ocean and reading spiritual books from the Tao, Sufi, Zen Buddhism, Alan Watts, Trungpa Rinpoche etc. Near the end of a year I got island fever (needing more cultural stimulation) and moved back to the states making my living painting original needlepoint canvas that would sell in a stores, that lasted a year and then morphed, by chance, into painting graphic murals for upgraded apartment complexes. After a year of that I became a bicycle messenger and went to Control Data Institute at night to learn how to program. After graduating, the programming jobs were in Los Angeles but I couldn’t breath the air so in 1982 I moved to San Diego where I became a pedicab driver in Balboa Park/San Diego Zoo. One day I saw this woman setting up a big camera and tripod and I started talking to her and she proceeded to tell me about the Southwestern public access cable station and their training programs. That changed the trajectory of my life. I went through all their bootcamp training, studio production, ENG production, editing, and started my RAD TV show that featured music videos they wouldn’t or couldn’t play on MTV, experimental film and video art along with one or two of my own music videos. After forming the band IdioT-SaVant in 1984 which lasted a year, and 3 years of RAD TV I moved to Los Angeles to get in a bigger pond which by 1986 had much cleaner air. I needed a job right away and I got one delivering pizzas at Jacopo’s in Beverly Hills, providing sustenance for many Hollywood notables. At this time I also had a 3/4″ Sony cuts only system with an early Amiga computer and one day I put an ad in the Pennysaver newspaper offering editing services. One of my first clients had a TV show and we ended up editing 5 days a week and that was the start of making a living in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. I eventually started shooting film, got a business partner, expanded Rad Productions into 4 edit bays, with employees and editors. During this time I directed around 50 music videos, half rap and half alt-rock. The post facility came to an end 3 years later and I worked as freelance editor on everything from Fox Sports promos to Dancing with the Stars to the Howie Mandel Show. I ended up making a bunch of extremely lo-fi films with the “most known unknown actor in the world” Dennis Woodruff, made a movie I wrote, directed. shot, scored and edited called Cold Creepy Feeling and became a Real Estate agent after getting “aged out” in Hollywood in 2010. I still make music, music videos, art and recently produced two documentaries called “5 Questions” a barebones documentary about how Americans feel about their country, the world and the future. The purpose of this documentary is to try and get beyond the shouting RED/BLUE rhetoric that we are force fed everyday by the media and get down to the commonality that binds us all. These are the questions. 1. How do you feel about the current state of your life
2. How do you feel about the current state of America?
3. How do you feel about the current state of the world?
4. How do you feel about the future of America?
5. How do you feel about the future of the world?
They can be seen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6ueQgQgvWk&t=1908s
and here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viGdaeKHG78&t=2905s

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?
Has it been a smooth road? No, there’s absolutely nothing smooth about Hollywood, it’s always reacting to the unexpected, like being raided by a SWAT team during an editing session, having my partner be arrested, having shows cancelled, dealing with shall I say “colorful” personalities, editing on a toxic shows but, there are good times too.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At the end of the day all the TV shows I worked on are yesterdays news, the hyper low budget movie I wrote, directed, scored and edited, Cold Creepy Feeling, one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, still has a few original scares to it, was based on things I have seen or experienced and is still fun to watch for free on TUBI. The “5 Questions” documentary is very interesting to get a read on how we as Americans got to our current political climate. And I could be clinically insane but I really like my own music, it lights up the endorphins in my brain so I think it’s good and occasionally somebody else will let me know they like it. Also as of this year I’ve been making protest art which I describe as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein on LSD. I’m just starting to have some sales and shows at this moment. They’re all 24″ x 36″ digital print on canvas and they can be seen here. https://www.artpal.com/disobay

How do you think about luck?
The woman with the camera and tripod from Southwestern Cable was pivotal as was the apartment owner, where I was living, granting me the opportunity to paint graphics on walls for a year. I ran into an editing client by chance at a restaurant and he told me a certain post super was looking for an editor, I contacted him, took a walk of the TV show Real People, which I was going to get on and then got contacted later that night by the same person saying they needed someone at the Howie Mandel show, next thing I knew I was an I.A.T.S.E. editor.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.keithkurlander.biz/, https://www.idiot-savant.net/, https://stonermoviechannel.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/keith.kurlander
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@keithkurlander1
• Other: https://www.artpal.com/disobay