Creative Principles

“When you are exploring with writing, particularly in the start, you don’t really know where your voice is going to go %100, so you gotta play around with a lot of things”, says author Olivia Hillier. “I’m obsessed with the female heroine, so that’s what all my stories are going to be like”. Olivia Hillier is an Australian Young Adult Author who writes Paranormal and Speculative fiction. She is mo...

Cheryl Lewis is a unique, multi-discipline performer on the stage and screen, member of SAG-AFTRA/AEA/AGVA/AGMA. She is a stunt performer, martial artist, fight choreographer, action designer, actor, dancer, circus aerialist, and puppeteer. In this interview, Cheryl Lewis talks about the difference between a stunt performer and a daredevil, how she actually instructs people to get hit by cars, the...

Michael Tennant grew up San Diego with a “disdain” for Los Angeles. “You’re taught the Dodgers are the devil,” he jokes. “LA is the worst. Don’t do this. But my brother did a play, I heard him get a laugh and that first hit of dopamine, I started chasing that. I liked the idea of performing.” In the early days, Tennant wanted to become an actor. “Good Will Hunting was a seminal movie,” he says. “T...

“I think it would have killed my career if I would have graduated from drama school and gotten all the lead parts and everything”, says actor Ólafur Darri Ólafsson. “I think that would have destroyed me because I really needed to just understand what we do.” Ólafur Darri Ólafsson is an Icelandic-American actor, producer, and screenwriter who is mostly known for ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, ‘...

“When Everyone Leads it’s a book about how people — wherever you are in your organization, your community, your company, your family — how you can exercise leadership to make things better,” says author Julia McBride. Julia Fabris McBride is Chief Civic Leadership Development Officer of the Kansas Leadership Center. She is also a certified coach and co-author of two books, ‘When Everyone Leads’, a...

Ali Siddiq got his start at an Open Mic in Houston, on Apollo night. In a fresh suit, like he had seen stand-ups on television wear, he “got boo’d” for the first time, his first time on stage. Two weeks later, in jeans and a tee shirt, he felt more relaxed and eventually started to host at this location. For his latest special, The NY Times writes, “In his eye-opening "The Domino Effect 2: Loss,"...

“I don’t ever set out with a theme,” says author Dana Pettrey. “I’m gonna teach these or these is the lesson. I just write the story and where the characters land is where they land faith wise.” Dani Pettrey is the the author of ‘Coastal Guardians’ a book series that includes books like ‘The Killing Tide,’ ‘The Crushing Depths,’ ‘The Deadly Shallows,’ among others. In this interview, we talk about...

“I wanted to become a stuntman since I was eight years old,” Lauro “Lash” Chartrand-Del Valle told me. In this interview, Lash talks about his work behind Rumble in the Bronx, The Last Samurai, and Ninja Turtles - The Next Mutation. We also discuss how to break in as a stuntman, his work with Jackie Chan, how there was no script for Rumble in the Bronx, getting shot on a Chuck Norris movie two yea...

As an eight-year-old, Herbert James Winterstern would sneak downstairs to watch movies with his dad. These movies, classics like Planet of the Apes (1968), which inspired him to become a writer-director. In his latest film, Supercell, “A teenage boy runs away to follow his fathers footsteps, legendary storm chaser Bill Brody.” The film stars Alec Baldwin, Skeet Ulrich, and Anne Heche. In this inte...

Award-winning filmmaker Robert Rippberger, filmmaker Devin Keaton, and business magnate Nathan Edwards have announced the groundbreaking of Ascent Studios, the soon-to-be largest film studio in North Carolina, amid the regions production boom. The state-of-the-art facility is located in Spring Hope, just a short drive from Raleigh, and spans on 200 acres of pristine land. The studio is being built...

“I’ve always been very interested in people. Originally, I wanted to study philosophy, but by accident, I stumbled into a psychology seminar,” said neuroscientist Friederike Fabritius. “I wanted to see how people behaved rather than thinking about how people behaved.” This led her to the study of neuroscience. Friederike is the author of ‘The Leading Brain’ and ‘The Brain-Friendly Workplace.’ The...

“I’d always been a big fan of the written word, from childhood, in different mediums,” says Maurice Williams. “Whether it be youthful song writing or my undergraduate degree in journalism. There’s just beauty in the creation, the alchemy of having nothing and then you have something, about writing.” In this case, the something from nothing is Entergalactic, an animated series about Jabari, a stree...

“In the beginning, the two shows were very different, at least for me,” says Peter Gould, in regards to writing for Breaking Bad and then being the creator of Better Call Saul. “When we started Breaking Bad, when the Writer’s Room opened, Vince Gilligan had already shot and edited the pilot.” He continues, “We knew where the story began, but in a lot of ways, we were still discovering who Walter W...

“I don’t know what made me want to be a writer, but I loved doing it a very early age,” says screenwriter David West Read. “I started making movies with my friends when I was in elementary school. I would have them over for sleepovers, then hand out out scripts.” Back then, the parodies were Jurassic Pork and David Read’s A Christmas Carol. “It’s something I gravitated towards. I thought for a lon...

Dana Stevens is a film critic for Slate and the author of Camera Man: Buster Keaton, the Dawn of Cinema, and the Invention of the Twentieth Century, a genre-defying work of cultural history based around the creative genius of the Great Stone Face. In this interview, we discuss the work of Buster Keaton, how the industry has changed for film critics, the letter she received from Roger Ebert at an e...

“I was particularly interested in writing comedy,” says Paul Lieberstein, who is best known for playing Toby on The Office, but has writing credits for King of the Hill, The Drew Carey Show, Ghosted, Space Force, and now, Lucky Hank. “Some Woody Allen short stories and Steve Martin albums. In my twenties, I learned there was a whole industry there, and you can do that, because I had never met anyo...

Diedrich Bader grew up in Paris, watching movies from Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Fred Astaire. Through some unique circumstances, he ended up performing as a Chaplin in front of a large crowd, getting a standing ovation, and he was hooked from then on to become a comedic performer. Diedrich has over 200 credits, a mixture of performances and voice work, including Office Space, Napoleon Dy...

Mireille Enos followed her brother’s footsteps into acting at an early age, which eventually led her to New York City to study acting. Today, she’s best known for The Killing, World War Z, Sabotage, Gangster Squad, Big Love, Hanna, and now, Lucky Hank. In the latest project, Lucky Hank, Mireille plays Lily, the wife Hank (Bob Odenkirk), an English department chairman at an underfunded college who...

George Tillman Jr. recalls going to see his first movie while at church summer school. “Ever since then, I caught the bug,” he told me. “I started off writing, but always considered myself a director.” This started with Soul Food in 1997.Thanks to this credibility, he was then able to make movies like Men of Honor, Notorious, Faster, and The Hate U Give. Now he’s back with another biopic, Big Geor...

Javicia Leslie was always a performer, whether that’s performing in front of family members or now, in front of millions of people. Today, she’s best known for starring in Batwoman, along with God Friended Me, Always a Bridesmaid, and Double Life. In her latest project, Double Life, the story “follows a widow who finds out from her late husband's mistress that his death was not an accident. Both w...

Before getting involved with screenwriting and producing, Jemima Khan was a journalist for publications like Vanity Fair and The New Statesman. She’s best known for The Clinton Affair, The Case Against Adnan Syed, and American Crime Story. Her latest project, What’s Love Got to Do with It? Is somewhat of a twist in her career. The rom-com, which she wrote, takes place in London, where “an award-wi...

Andrew Newman loves all things spiritual and creative. He’s written books for families - like ‘The Hug Who Got Stuck’ or ‘The Great Love of Rose and Thorn’ - to help parents connect on those hectic days of growing and learning. In this interview, we talk about “the web of sticky thoughts,” explaining complex ideas to children, characterizing “a hug,” the breathing meditations in the books, when to...

As a teenager, Joe Hart learned about Dale Carnegie from his father. As a young lawyer, he took Carnegie’s book, ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ to heart, eventually taking a course from the influential writer, which made him re-think his career and his future. These days, Hart is the President and CEO of Dale Carnegie Training. In addition to being a Dale Carnegie graduate, Hart worked...

Described as a “rambunctious child,” David Moscow started his acting career reading sides for ‘Stand By Me.’ While he wasn’t cast in this major film, in his second role, he was cast as Young Josh in the movie 'Big' (Older Josh, of course, played by Tom Hanks). Beyond his acting career, David found a passion around food. The series, From Scratch, “…follows actor, adventurer and urbanite David Mosco...

“Why do you think I get up everyday?” joked Stephen Covey, author of ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.’ His daughter, Cynthia, had just asked him if he would ever write a book as good as the 1989 classic. The result? Live Life in Crescendo. Co-authored with his daughter Cynthia, Stephen Covey’s ‘Live Life in Crescendo: Your Most Important Work Is Always Ahead of You’ was the author’s missi...