Today we’d like to introduce you to Chase Hinton.
Chase, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was born in Toronto and grew up in Prescott (rhymes with biscuit), Arizona. Having that balance of liberal Canadian and conservative town made me see things from multiple sides, something I’m grateful for to this day.
My mom was a professional dancer and then a dance teacher, so I started dancing when I was three which eventually led to acting. At first acting was an escape. I’d do any play I could, even if there wasn’t a big role for me. By middle school, I was doing seven or eight plays a year. I’d rehearse one play three to seven, the next one seven to ten, then finish whatever homework I didn’t get done between scenes and go to bed. I loved the attention, I loved the applause, I loved the validation that came from being chosen for the part over dozens of other people.
Acting isn’t like that for me now. It isn’t a place to be someone else, it’s the only place where all of me can live. There is so much of being human that has no place in “civilized” society. I wasn’t allowed to show my anger, so my anger turned to tears, and I was made fun of for those. So you put it all away. When I act I get to let everything I am free.
Has it been a smooth road?
I don’t think anyone has a smooth road, there were lots of things that were real struggles for me. But mostly I realize how incredibly lucky I was to have the safety net and support system that I do. When I was T-boned in a hit and run, my family was there to help, I didn’t have to lose all of my savings over something that wasn’t my fault. Most people aren’t even close to that lucky, and that’s just one of many examples where while I climbed and worked hard, my family was there to catch me if I fell.
My personal struggle was wanting to be liked, wanting to be chosen. I always wanted to be part of one of those groups that did all the fun things, but instead it was always me having to arrange things and make the plans. I felt like the invitor and never the invitee. Even with teams on the playground or on the basketball court at the gym, I would have to put the team together if I wanted to play.
That used to eat me up inside. I convinced myself that though I had friends, I was nobody’s number one. It made me overly idealize romantic relationships and give their pursuit far too much of my energy. That’s one of the things our first feature, IRL, is about: what happens when we don’t get the love we need, and the connections between all the things we try to fill the hole with.
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
While acting let me deal with and work through so many emotions, writing is where I get to express my biggest ideas. People always ask which I prefer, but for me they feed each other. Writing I get to create worlds, and acting I get to live in them, both let me express and explore different sides of issues.
In 2010, I added “producer” to my multi-hyphenates when Ricardo Perez-Selsky and I started Cut to the Chase Films. I found all those years of having to make the team myself were immensely helpful to producing. Our first project was a short film entitled “Run.” We learned so many lessons on that first shoot, like perhaps don’t shoot 16 pages on day one of the first film you’ve ever produced and make sure your script supervisor isn’t asleep. But we did it, and we’ve kept learning lessons on every subsequent shoot. Last year, we made our first feature film, IRL. In order to make a feature we had to fund it all ourselves. Ric and I are both passionate about many issues, especially battling the gender inequity in Hollywood. So we put our small amount of money where our mouth was, bringing on Molly Beucher as our lead producer and Sarah Phillips as our cinematographer. IRL had a diverse team with majority female crew, majority female department heads, and majority female cast. It was the best set I’ve ever worked on because we hired hungry and talented people who have gone on to hire each other multiple times since. We were one of only 22 films in 2018 to receive the ReFrame Stamp from The Sundance Institute and Women in Film for our commitment to gender-balanced production. We were shocked there were so few films but honored to be listed next to films like The Favourite, The Wife, and Crazy, Rich, Asians.
IRL debuted at the Idyllwild International Festival of Cinema where it was nominated for seven awards and won four (the most of any film at the festival). Molly was awarded Best Producing and Sarah won Best Cinematography, awards they both very much deserved. I was honored to win Best Actor and Julia Parker won Best Supporting Actress. We are currently navigating multiple distribution offers and look forward to bringing the film to you soon.
Meanwhile, I continue to write, my focus very much on trying to figure out what it takes to actually change someone’s mind. We are in a world where people don’t care when someone else is suffering, but can root for Walter White as he endangers his family and nearly kills a child. It seems for so many that TV, film, and literature are the only ways in which people really empathize with someone who is going through a situation different than theirs. How do we use that power for good? My current projects include an animated series designed to foster empathy and teach boys to be better men, as well as a political series about a liberal Latinx woman so disheartened by our deep partisanship that she pretends to be a Republican in order to try and change things from the inside.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
A lot of people like to look down on Los Angeles, including a lot of people who live here. I think LA is amazing, anything you want you can find one of the best versions of in the world (except for real deep dish pizza). The great minds here are among the smartest in the world, the beautiful people among the most gorgeous, even the assholes gave up being hot shit somewhere else to risk trying to make it here. I get to wake up every day exactly where I need to be to make every one of my dreams come true, and how many people get to say that?
Contact Info:
- Website: cuttothechasefilms.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: instagram.com/chasehhinton
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cuttothechasefilms
- Twitter: @chasehhinton
Image Credit:
Sarah Rhoades, Sarah Phillips
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