Friends and colleagues always ask, “How did you go from actor to director?” My standard dinner-party response: “A very orgasmic shampoo.” Let me explain.
For years, I did plays that I was proud of but that very few saw. I papered casting offices with postcards for my projects. I did improv shows, stand-up comedy, co-founded an after-school program for LGBTQ+ youth, and got up every day intent on breaking into the business any way that I could.
The biggest “success" of those years was that the back of my head was in “Sex and the City 2.” That was the highlight. I shot a commercial or two. (I think it was one.) And I did background work on “Guiding Light.” That was a steady gig until one day during shooting I spilled a cup of prop coffee all over myself and was never invited back.
How to Become a Film Director Through it all, I prided myself on my hustle, all the while refusing to admit what everyone around me knew: This was going nowhere.
Then I got called in for a shampoo commercial. I took the afternoon off from my day job to traipse downtown in the snow, convinced that this was the day for a breakthrough.
And in the room, the casting director asked me to make an orgasm face. Huh? “The shampoo is supposed to be orgasmic,” she said dryly, without looking up from her sides. “What do you look like when you, you know…?” Thrown by the intimate question, and controlling every cell in my body that wanted to scream, I quickly shot three different happy faces at the camera and then one really pleasured one for good measure. They thanked me, and I left. That was it. I didn’t get to even say anything. It was all, ironically, very anticlimactic.
And on the subway home, I burst into tears. I was devastated. I was angry. I knew I wasn’t going to get the part (um, I didn’t). I also knew that the road ahead was going to be long and hard. I was staring at a major crossroads, and I had to make a major change. A writer friend of mine, Molly Carmel, calls these moments GOD moments: Grow Or Die.
A week later, in an acting class, the guest instructor was praising “The Syringa Tree,” a one-woman show from South African actress Pamela Gien. Suddenly, I lit up. I would write a one-man show. My “Syringa Tree” would be a 90-minute comedy about being a gay kid from Staten Island.
Non-actors love to make one-man shows the butt of jokes, but the years that followed—as I wrote and performed that show—were perhaps the most important and critical of my development. The process forced me to figure out what was unique about me, what I wanted to say as an artist, what kind of work I wanted to do, who I was in a room, in the world, and in the industry. My professional life changed. My personal life changed. It was a painful period of growing into myself as a creative, but it was crucial.
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I wish I could tell you that success was around the corner. It wasn’t. But the show led to an independent movie deal—that then fell apart during the ’08 recession. And again, a crossroads presented itself. Grow Or Die.
This time, I was even angrier. So, I went home and downloaded an application for film school, intent on again pivoting my journey, this time into directing. I wanted to take more control of my career. I was tired of waiting for someone else to give me an opportunity, and I felt that as a director I would be in a better position to create my own opportunities. The decision was less about changing my role in the business and more about channeling my anger into growth in any way that I could.
Film school led to work in television, which led to work in film. Nine years after that last crossroads and 16 after the very orgasmic shampoo, my first feature film, “Team Marco,” was picked up by Samuel Goldwyn Films. Last week, Leonard Maltin called it “life-affirming,” and I was a puddle for 48 hours, mostly because I saw in the review a quiet nod from the critic that he knew what it has truly taken to get to this moment.
My creative journey has been long. And in the film world it is just beginning. One thing I have learned for sure: Don’t run from the low points, don’t shy from the anger. Use them to grow and to re-imagine who you are and who you want be.
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