Meet Venita Ozols-Graham! Venita is Director, Writer, Producer, and First Assistant Director. Venita splits her time between Washington State and Los Angeles and is an award-winning filmmaker and veteran of the film festival circuit. After graduating from Pratt Institute in New York City, Venita moved to Los Angeles and was accepted into the D.G.A.’s Assistant Director’s Training Program. Venita joined the D.G.A. as an Assistant Director and A.D.’d on both features & television shows, she worked her way up to First Assistant Director/Associate Producer on shows like The X-Files, CSI, Veronica Mars, The District, Star Trek DS-9, and The Shield. About 10 years ago, Venita started her own production company called Wanderlust Film and she began directing and writing her own projects. Venita’s first feature film, which she directed & produced called Black Widows, was distributed across streaming platforms by Gravitas Ventures. For the past few years, Venita has been honing her craft as a writer/director by making award-winning short films including - Amy’s in the Freezer, Angel, Chicken, and Lift. Her latest short, Who Wants Dessert? which stars Sean Young, has garnered several awards and is currently finishing its festival run. Most recently, Venita has been busy raising funds for her next short film – The Ossan which will begin production in October of 2022. I met Vanita in 2019 when we both were traveling the film festival circuit with our short films and we hit it off right away. I love how passionate Venita is about filmmaking and about supporting others in their own artistic endeavors. I’m excited to bring you our chat where we learned more about each other, talk about what it takes to crowdfund successfully, and about Venita’s new project The Ossan. Connect with Venita on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/venitaozolsgraham Connect with Venita on Twitter - https://twitter.com/usedbodyparts Check out Venita’s newest project The Ossan and please consider donating, on its website - https://www.theossanmovie.com
Venita Ozols-Graham - Director, Writer, Producer & First Assistant Director
[00:00:00] Cris: Hi, and welcome to Blissful Spinster. This week's guest is director writer, producer, and first assistant director, Venita Ozols- Graham Venita splits her time between Washington State and Los Angeles, and is an award-winning filmmaker and veteran of the film festival circuit. After graduating from Pratt Institute in New York city, Vonita moved to Los Angeles and was accepted into the DGAs assistant director trainee program. Venita joined the DGA as an assistant director and ad on both feature films and television shows. She worked her way up to first assistant director, associate producer on shows like the X files, CSI, Veronica Mars, the district
[00:00:36] star Trek, DS nine, and the shield. Whoa, about 10 years ago, Venita started her own production company called Wonderlust films and she began directing and writing her own projects. Venita's first feature film, which she directed and produced called black widow. Was distributed across streaming platforms by gravitas ventures. For the past few years, Venita has been honing her craft as a writer director by making award-winning short films, [00:01:00] including Amy's in the freezer, angel, chicken and lift. Most recently, Venita has been busy raising funds for her next short film, the Ossan, which will begin production in October of 2022. I met Vinita in 2019 when we were both traveling the festival circuit with our own short films and we hit it off right away. I love how passionate Venita is about filmmaking and about supporting others in their own artistic endeavors. I'm excited to bring you our chat, where we learn a little bit more about each other, talk about what it takes to crowdfund successfully and about Bonita's new project, the Osan. So however you found this podcast. Thank you for tuning in and please enjoy this. week's episode!
[00:01:41] Hi Venita.
[00:01:41] Venita: Hey Chris, how you doing? I'm good.
[00:01:43] How are you? Very well, thank you.
[00:01:45] Cris: That's good. Thanks for coming on my
[00:01:47] Venita: podcast. Thank you for having me
[00:01:49] Cris: for the listeners out there. Vanita is a. Really talented director who came up the ranks as an ad and we met on the festival circuit. So I thought we could have a, a really insightful chat [00:02:00] probably. So let's start at the beginning.
[00:02:01] Like how did you get on the journey to being working in film? Yeah, well, I was
[00:02:04] Venita: from New York, so I wasn't aware that being in the film industry was even an option until I was in college. And I walked by a film crew that was shooting in Greenwich village and it was our next stop Greenwich village. He was directing it.
[00:02:17] And the video village thing was right there on the sidewalk, the director, the script supervisor, no security. So I AMD up right behind them and I was watching the monitors and I was watching the actors and I was watching him direct. I went, oh my God, I need to be a part of this. This is amazing. So I went back to school that day and I started looking at film classes.
[00:02:37] went, OK. You gotta take some film classes here. So I really switched over quickly, I think in my junior year. And I became a film major. And that's what I graduated as, and then I was in New York, but I heard about the assistant director's training program in Hollywood. So I flew out to LA and I took the eight and a half hour test at UCLA with the other 1200 applicants.
[00:02:59] And then [00:03:00] they narrowed it down to the top hundred and they interviewed us and then they picked 12 of us and. That was my entree. And they trained me for, uh, two and a half years as a second ad trainee. Then I became a second ad and then I eventually moved up to first ad and associate producer. And then I got stuck there.
[00:03:19] It was like the glass ceiling. I got tired of beating my head against the ceiling and I made my own production company and I directed. Indeed feature. And then I somehow found my niche, which is I love short films.
[00:03:35] Cris: So did you go to NYU? No,
[00:03:36] Venita: I PR we were kinda sister schools. We had a lot of friends back and forth and what I liked about Pratt, I went in as a painting major.
[00:03:45] I was a fine artist. I wasn't looking at the film department. We had a relatively small film department and anything that I wanted whenever I wanted it, I was able to get my friends at NYU would have to put in reservations for two months from [00:04:00] now. You'll get your hour, you know, so I was really lucky and I got to direct the school thesis project.
[00:04:05] So I, um, really enjoyed my time at prat. That's
[00:04:08] Cris: cool. So then you heard about the assistant directing program. Did you. Go into it thinking if I become an ad, maybe it'll lead to being a director. Is that what you did? Well, yes. I only asked because I took the test when I first came out here, Uhhuh thinking the same thing.
[00:04:23] OK. I did not. I think I was told I was like a question or too shy or something. Ah, and then I realized I'm not type a enough to. Be picked for whatever they wanted. I was a hell of a good, like I was the PA they'd hide from you guys. Cause I was doing their paperwork. Right, right. That's why. Cause I was the key PA.
[00:04:42] That was really the second, second, you know? Um, because I'm really good people, person mm-hmm , which I think you also need, you don't just need to be type a, you need both sides of that.
[00:04:53] Venita: You have to be a psychiatrist. yeah,
[00:04:56] Cris: seriously. I, I started collecting my days cuz I was gonna do [00:05:00] it the heart, you know, there's the.
[00:05:01] Right, but the I'm sure you've heard it. There's the easy way, which is not really easy. right. Cause passing that test is not
[00:05:07] Venita: easy. There's a hard way in the harder way.
[00:05:09] Cris: yeah. In the harder way. And I think I was on like my, I think I had 350 or 400 days when I got injured. Wow.
[00:05:16] Venita: Whoa. So I was
[00:05:17] Cris: close to cuz I was told you needed something somewhere between five and 600 cuz they always throw out days.
[00:05:22] Yeah. I think it
[00:05:23] Venita: was five 20
[00:05:23] Cris: if I remember correctly. Yeah. This was the nineties. And so yeah, it was somewhere around there. So I was over halfway. But I also realized that it didn't look like the ADSS I knew were actually getting to move on to direct. Yeah. So the name didn't really relate to. You wanted it to become,
[00:05:41] Venita: you are so correct.
[00:05:43] I assumed an assistant director would naturally gravitate to become a director. Our first welcome into the training program. Dinner were all the people who were selected were brought out and in this banquet and they asked us in the room, they said, okay, how many of you wanna be producers? [00:06:00] And eight hand shut up out of the 12.
[00:06:02] How many of you wanna be writers? Two hand, shut up. How many of you wanna be? It was something else I can't recall. And then how many of you wanna be directors? And it was me and I said, am I in the wrong room? And they said, kinda, this would be an assistant director is really production your natural. You'd go to be a first and a U P M, then a producer.
[00:06:23] That's the path you're on. They said, but don't be disheartened. One or two assistant directors have actually become directors. It's like one or two. Great. I said I'll be number three. so, yeah, you're right. It's a misnomer. Really? Shouldn't be assistant director. It should be like assistant set producer or something.
[00:06:43] I thought it should be set general. That's a good one. I also thought set facilitator. Yeah, because we facilitate everyth. I
[00:06:50] Cris: mean, the ad's really run the set so that the director and the DP, like everyone doesn't have to worry about that stuff, but
[00:06:57] Venita: that's not creative. And it's exactly not what I, you [00:07:00] know, I was, I was an artist I wanted to come out and make movies.
[00:07:04] So by the way, that's something, I realized people keep asking because I produced mm-hmm but I also write, and I also direct, but I realized recently that what I am is none of those singularly or even group it's I'm a phone. I'm literally a filmmaker. I make little movies and sometimes in some categories and sometimes in others, but that's what I've always wanted to be.
[00:07:27] That's cool. Yeah.
[00:07:28] Cris: I mean, we're always evolving and it always takes a minute to really find your niche. I
[00:07:33] Venita: think. Well, it's funny because I actually knew what I was. Way back in college. I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker, but I lost my way being in the big industry because everybody's so categorized and everybody's a cog in the machine, you know, you're not a filmmaker, you're a grip or you're a ad or you're a whatever.
[00:07:53] So I managed to extricate myself from. But the good news about all those years I spent, there is obviously everything I [00:08:00] learned, but also the connections that I made, like on this film that I'm doing next, that I need visual effects are really important in it. There's some very unusual visual effects. And so I called my old friend who is ahead of CBS visual effects.
[00:08:15] And I said, I really need some help on this one. Can you recommend anybody? And he stepped in himself. He's doing a previs for us and actually doing the visual effects for us. I'm in shock, but it's those old friends that I've made in the majors. Now that I'm in the minors. they're helping me out.
[00:08:35] Cris: No, that's cool.
[00:08:37] Because, yeah, I mean, now you're basically networking laterally with these people cuz you guys came up the ranks together. It's kind of cool. I talk about that quite often, um, with others, how important, cuz I do want listeners to get something out of this. It's not just a vanity podcast. We've spent a lot of years.
[00:08:56] You, me and whoever else I've been speaking to navigating this [00:09:00] world, the feature film world, independent feature, film, TV, like all of it's a part of the big umbrella. All of them are quite different
[00:09:08] Venita: from each other. Go back and forth from episodic television to feature film, especially when I was a trainee, my each assignment would be different.
[00:09:15] And what I really learned the difference was is, was in speed more than anything like in television was just hurry up, hurry up, shoot the budget. Show that that wasn't a great take, too bad, moving on. Then you're in features and I I'd be like that. And they'd save Anita, slow it down. . It's art. You're creating much more.
[00:09:36] The product has to be far more quality. Then television, artistically speaking. So, yeah, I mean,
[00:09:44] Cris: especially back earlier, I think these days there's some long form TV that, you know, that shoots like a feature, but I'll do you one better. I came up the ranks and unscripted. You think you were moving fast? Try being on the amazing race for 11 seasons.
[00:09:58] Oh my, is that where you met [00:10:00] Brian? Brian. And I, so for the listeners Vene and I have a, a friend in common, which we didn't know until after we met. And I believe he figured it out with one of thoses posted about, yeah, the film festival we were both at, which was called the Austin revolution, film festival.
[00:10:14] It's a fantastic festival, but organizers really great. So if you're thinking about submitting anything, you have to them have added, it's a good place to be. If they accept you. Brian was married and I'm, he's gonna laugh and I'm hoping she's not listening. cause I can't remember her name right now, but he was married to a production manager on the very first film I ever worked on out here.
[00:10:38] Huh. Which was a movie the week. And that's how I met Brian tanky. Ah, okay. And then years later, I was already working for the amazing race, cuz I started season three. I can't remember what season Brian started, but I think it was five or six or something like that. And I walked in the office and I'm. What are you doing here?
[00:10:57] Cause I always thought he was a feature film guy. [00:11:00] Um, no, we jumped back and forth. Yeah. You know, and I, I ended up like, I, I chased after the amazing race and I did 11 seasons of that and wow. I did a season of whale wars and I was on a boat for 94 days in Antarctica. I did a season of deadliest catch. I became this producer because they wouldn't give us directing titles.
[00:11:21] Oh yeah. Cause of the DGA. Right. You know, I ended up like a few years ago. I made a documentary directing reel because I have been direct. All of that time, if I'm the only producer out there with the camera, oftentimes shooting it. Yeah. Who do you think's directing it? I, I don't, I'd love to be in the DJ, but that's not gonna happen that way.
[00:11:43] Yeah. I'm
[00:11:43] Venita: in the, but towards the end, I began to realize that. They weren't much as they helped me as a woman get into Hollywood. They weren't helping me move up. That last step in the ladder. I, I went to something called the women's steering committee. One time [00:12:00] they had a meeting and I went to present my thinking that why don't we ask the director skill to create some sort of mentorship program for.
[00:12:08] First ad women and UPMs who really wanna direct, but just aren't getting that opportunity and similar to the training program. And they basically pooed me out of the room. They honestly weren't interested. They said they didn't think that the male members would be interested. Some, they gave me some sort of lip service.
[00:12:26] So I walked out and said, Fine, whatever. Now they actually do have some programs to help. I've
[00:12:32] Cris: seen some, I've seen some of those advertised.
[00:12:34] Venita: Yeah. Yeah. Finally it's like 20 years after I asked for it, but it didn't help me. So I realized that being a member of the DGA was not gonna help me move up. So I just had to do it myself.
[00:12:45] The first film I directed was non DGA because we couldn't. I would've loved to have been DGA, but our minuscule budget did not allow for it. That's just the way I started my directing career. So you did a feature
[00:12:59] Cris: first? Not a
[00:12:59] Venita: short [00:13:00] first. Yeah. It's called black widows. It fell into my lap. There was an, an actress who had had acted in my short film, used body parts.
[00:13:07] And she came up to me with a script afterwards and say, would you read this? So I read it. And she's very funny, very dark. And it wasn't quite a feature yet. It was way short. I read it. And I said, this is great. You should develop this. So for a year she bounced ideas off me. I helped her develop it. And then finally it was at the point where I said, I don't think I can help you anymore with this.
[00:13:26] It's what it's gonna be. And she said, it's never gonna get made unless why don't we make it? And I said, what do you mean? And she said, we've got iPhones, we've got actresses. We can, we could do this. And she said, I can hit up my dad for $30,000. And I went well, and I could put in some money too. You know what let's do.
[00:13:46] I just jumped in completely unaware of what I was in
[00:13:50] Cris: for
[00:13:51] Venita: and the worst part is the script really wasn't ready. That's the sad part. And, uh, with the minimal amount of financing that we had. [00:14:00] For instance, my cameraman, he, everything was handheld. I had no Dolly. I had no first AC I had nobody to pull focus.
[00:14:07] If I wanted to change focus, he had to move in or move out it was literally a one man band for an entire feature. So if you give all those parameters that I literally pulled this out of my. Tush. Um, it's amazing that it got made and gravitas ventures, uh, distributed. It was good enough that they felt it could be distributed.
[00:14:28] So which doesn't really say much, but still I managed to make a movie. And so I learned from start to finish. What that entails, which helps me enormously as I moved on. I'm never recommending people look at that as an example of my work because it was an example of me going to film school, how to put a future film together from start to finish.
[00:14:51] It has moments. It has some
[00:14:53] Cris: funny moments, but no, but I mean, that's quite a, I think every film that. Ends up getting made is [00:15:00] a, is a miracle. Well,
[00:15:00] it's
[00:15:01] Venita: a leap of faith too. It really is a leap of faith. You just go, okay. Like those bat flyers should jump off the cliff. You go, Alrighty, go won't
[00:15:14] sometimes. Yeah. The next feature that I make will be. Not done that way. It I'm very happy making really well made short films. I'm now at the top of my game, there, I have com the best professionals I could ask for helping me. And this last one that I'm doing right now, the Osan it's, I'm really concentrating on making a beautiful film.
[00:15:42] We have an offer out to. Can't say who it is, but an extraordinary actor. And if we get him this film, everybody will hear about it because he's so special, but I'm concentrating on making the most beautiful film. I can. This time, it's always been something I focused [00:16:00] on differently in each short film, but for this one, it's the art department and the acting obviously, and the story it's, it's a magical realism kind of mystical story.
[00:16:10] So it's a poem in some ways. I'm trying to make well,
[00:16:14] Cris: you've, we've touched on some stuff, but do you have any like a favorite story of some of the stuff you have cause you worked on, on golden pond and Zou and, and then I'm assuming your IMDB is lacking in a lot of your credits. Cause yeah, there's like gaps and I'm like, I bet she's worked on all kinds of things that I'd be like you did
[00:16:31] Venita: what?
[00:16:32] Yeah. If you mention on golden pod, that might be my favorite story because I was attached to Catherine Hepburn. You know, I was a second ad on that and that particular movie needed somebody to basically buddy up to her and be her person. Because she's an icon. She's also like 75 or something at the time.
[00:16:50] So I would have my walkie talkie and I'd hang out in her dressing room cabin, which was walking distance to the cabin we shot in and just hang out with her for [00:17:00] hours. And she'd tell me stories about her mom, the suffragette marching in the parades. And I got the whole history from her and it was. An amazing experience.
[00:17:09] I spent a whole summer with Catherine. I got to introduce her to Michael Jackson. Michael wanted to meet her. So they made me meet him at the car and bring him up and knock on the door and say, okay, um, miss Hepburn, Mr. Jackson, Mr. Jackson, miss Hepburn. And I'm standing going, this is an out of body experience.
[00:17:26] This is so weird, but the best story. Was when she was about to meet Henry Fonda for the first time we were just beginning the movie and she was there in her A-frame and Henry had just arrived and he was in the main house and she heard on my radio that Henry is Landon. She said, Vinita, can you arrange to, for me to meet him privately, like on the back porch?
[00:17:49] And I said, sure, let me go over there and I'll come. When he's ready to meet you. So I set it up. It was just the director, mark Cordell and Henry. And I went back and got Catherine [00:18:00] and she has something behind her back as she walked up to meet him going, what is this? So she says, uh, so MIS step Fonda in all these years.
[00:18:09] So we both been in this industry. We have never. Met each other or had the opportunity to work together. So I, I'm very excited and I understand that you wear hats in this movie, several hats. So I wanted to give you this. And she takes out Spencer Tracy's hat. The one that he always used to wear this gray fedora and oh my goodness.
[00:18:30] Wanted to him. And he said, this was Spencer's and I'd like you to have it. And Henry actually was visibly moved like Spencer Tracy's. This is amazing. So I can't take this. And she said, Now it, it was meant to give to you. And he says, well, what can I do in return? And she said, you're a brilliant artist.
[00:18:48] I've seen your lithographs, your paintings. You're a wonderful artist, perhaps after the movie's over, you could make. A piece of art that somehow reflects the hats that you use. And he said, okay. [00:19:00] So after we wrapped on golden pond, a few months went by and in the mail, I got this beautifully framed lithograph of the three hats, including Spencers.
[00:19:09] And I said for Bonita, with warmest, good wishes, love Henry. And it was like number 72 out of 120. He had given her the artist's proof. And then he created one for everybody in the cast and crew. We were really small cast and crew cuz there were no x-rays it was all took play. It was like a play almost.
[00:19:27] And it was actually a play before we turned it into a movie. So that was a pretty amazing moment to watch Katherine Hein meet Henry
[00:19:36] Cris: Fonda. I love that. That Henry Fonda story. I love film sets. I absolutely adore them. Yeah, meet. Sure. So you really like that niche of the short films and be able to go on the festival circle?
[00:19:47] Yeah. I didn't know
[00:19:48] Venita: about film festivals. All I had ever heard about was Sundance. And I knew that was a thing, but then a friend of mine said, oh, my friend directed this feature film and it's playing in scream [00:20:00] Fest in Hollywood. Do you wanna go to the festival and watch it? And I went. Oh, they have a festival in Hollywood and she said, yeah.
[00:20:06] So I went and it was a female vampire movie, Chasity bites. Yeah. Lotti Noles directed it with their husband. So anyway, I went and I saw all these people in the lobby, everybody talking and it was so exciting and I got to watch movie and see the Q and a afterwards. I went damn I wanna be a part of this, but it, I hadn't made my first short yet.
[00:20:28] So I didn't know. That was even an option for me. I made the short film as a proof of concept. It was called used body parts and it was a very graphic, horror movie. I dismembered a young woman's leg cuz she's hanging on the fence very realistically. But after I made it, a lot of people said, why don't you just wrap this up in a little short story for and submitted the festivals.
[00:20:49] This is gonna do great. And I said, I can do that. And I did that. And then I submitted it and I got my first trophy. And that was it. When you get your first [00:21:00] trophy, you go, I'm liking this and I was off and running. And then I just segued out of the horror genre into, um, my genre is. Like the Twilight zone.
[00:21:11] I finally figure get out. That's what I grew up on. That's what I loved. That's what I wanna make cautionary tales. Mm-hmm all of my short films, other than lift because somebody else wrote that and I co-directed it to help her get it made, cuz she'd never directed before, but my genre is very dark stories, but that are.
[00:21:28] Also funny and weird my word, the world of short
[00:21:31] Cris: filmmaking and the festivals, I think even more than what I'm up to really relies on, on other filmmakers support and that community. Can you kind of talk about that a bit, cuz you seem to have, have grasp that. I don't, I just, I love seeing people rally around you, you, you seem to make, get a film made every year almost, you know?
[00:21:51] Yeah. Well, and the secret to
[00:21:52] Venita: that seriously. Is that I support them as well. I cannot tell you how many crowdfunders, [00:22:00] I've donated to scripts. I've read reviews, I've read books. I've bought, I really support my friends and not to just to get them to support me, but because it's a joy, this is my world. It's amazing group of talented people that I have acquired through the festival run over the last decade.
[00:22:19] And I love them. They're they. The best people in the world, the studio system, there's a lot of people who just do it for a living, you know, like a lot of the crew, it's a job. And there's a lot of angry people in there too, who are always bitching about everything. And I do it because I love it. It's the joy of creating.
[00:22:39] And so I, in this world, you've got to love it to do it because it's not a monetary thing. And so you're with a whole bunch of like-minded people who are. Struggling to be able to create stories together. It's fun. That's awesome. But I think this is my last short that I'm about to make, because I have [00:23:00] X amount of time left in my life and you have to be cognizant of that.
[00:23:04] And I have a couple of scripts that I've written and a TV pilot for series that we did the. Hitch stick. And, um, right now I have it in somebody's hands and it's based on one of the shorts that I made. Amy's in the freezer that I love. And I have a producing partner, Calvin VanDerBeek, who's been really helpful and he's going to take them to AFL AFM and see what he can do with that and getting financing.
[00:23:28] So I would like to do a couple of bigger project media projects. Oh, cool. , but I think my film festival short film experience may be running its course at this point, but you never know ,
[00:23:41] Cris: I mean, I've loved meeting, you know, there's several people that I've met through, including you through the short film festival, but I was like, now it's time.
[00:23:51] I need to make my feature. Yep. And some listeners may know, and some may not. It can take six months and it can take five, 10 years to get it made [00:24:00] the script. I wrote it in 2019 draft five made it to the semi-final round of the awesome film festival in three categories, which was pretty rare. I was told it's now on draft 28.
[00:24:12] It's it is super ready to shoot. Yeah. I have done all kinds of work. And the thing is, is it's, it's a, I've turned the romcom on its head. It's basically a coming a middle age story wrapped in an unromantic comedy. That's a good idea. Yeah. So you end up cheering for her to say no to, to the guy, this perfectly good guy.
[00:24:30] Like it's not because he is an asshole. It's not because of any of that. It's because she has realized she's happy single. Oh
[00:24:36] Venita: my God, is that timely? Or what I. I'm married to somebody who's very patient and understanding. And that's why I married him because he allows me to have this whole life aside from being his wife and allows is by the way, the joke, because nobody allows me to do anything, but I realize that I'm probably not great marriage material.
[00:24:59] [00:25:00] I, we had children together raised them and that was great. And now I feel sorry for him because he's alone a lot because I'm. Doing my adventures happily. He doesn't mind being alone, but I've given a lot of thought to that. That if I hadn't had children, I probably would not have gotten married because my life's an adventure and being married, you're obligated.
[00:25:22] to care about somebody else's. Life um,
[00:25:28] Cris: that sounds
[00:25:29] Venita: selfish. And its I have this one little life and I want to live it to its fullest. And I think that's what you're talking about.
[00:25:37] Cris: There it is. Um, I went through a moment like in my mid thirties to probably early forties where I was like is what people are saying.
[00:25:46] Is there something wrong? Like wrong with me? You know, I. Try it, I would try to, and I I've never had a, what anyone could call a relationship. I have dated some and then run mm-hmm because I just can't, it's not my [00:26:00] comfortable spot. Yeah.
[00:26:01] Venita: And society, especially telling women that they're supposed to
[00:26:04] Cris: it's.
[00:26:04] This is the thing is we are it's part the patriarchy with a big P right. Women from the first Disney film that is thrown into the VCR for all young women to watch or in yours, in my case, The first one, we were plopped down in a movie theater to watch on a giant movie screen. Right, right. What do we learn?
[00:26:24] The girl, even the most progressive ones, right? The young woman goes to the dad, the king. I wanna leave the castle and find adventure, find myself. Right. Great. Start leaves the castle. What does she find? Five minutes later. she points at it and goes, I want that prince Charlie. It's a prince, right?
[00:26:44] Venita: who
[00:26:44] Cris: somehow suddenly bestows her happiness on.
[00:26:48] and now all of us are growing up. Whether, whether we're cisgendered, whether we're lesbians, whether we're, you know, trans women, we're still all [00:27:00] getting the same message that if you are a woman or identify as a woman, your happiness is exterior
[00:27:05] Venita: to yourself. Correct.
[00:27:06] Cris: Right. So I woke up one day going, we're all being gas lit.
[00:27:10] Oh yes. By society, by our parents, by, you know, not all women want kids and not all women. Necessarily wanna be in a relationship. Yep. Um, I know
[00:27:21] Venita: I have several women, friends who I've been friends with since we were in our teens that I've watched in life who have chosen not to get married, not to have children and you know what they're doing fine.
[00:27:32] Uh, they say, you know, maybe I'm a little worried when I, if I make it to my eighties, maybe I won't have a child helping me, but I've had the
[00:27:40] Cris: greatest life. Yeah. I don't worry at all about that, but also. You realize that if you look at the studies. Single women have more friends than married women? Yes, that's true.
[00:27:53] Like we're not we don't sit around at home. We're like poor and, and lonely. [00:28:00] Like that's not
[00:28:01] Venita: the life. Yeah. I can have a dinner date anytime I want with all of my women friends on top of that. I love eating
[00:28:05] Cris: alone. Yeah. I love going to the movies alone.
[00:28:08] Venita: Yeah, too. It's funny. My, I have a house up in Washington state.
[00:28:12] Yeah. Uh, wake up there and I have my apartment in Los Angeles right now. My husband's up in Washington. I'm in Los Angeles. We occasionally like, I'll go up there and spend a few weeks with him and then I'll come down here. He might come down here and spend a week with me. This works. I really do love him, but I get to see all my friends here.
[00:28:31] When I'm down here, have meaningful relationships with people. It's there is no one set way that you're supposed to be married and we're forced fed this when we're little girls and we're subservient to the man and the marriage is the most important thing. It's like the. I don't agree with that, you know, and there's a lot of people who disagree with it, but I really do think that my one little life is the biggest gift I have and I want to make the most I can out of it.[00:29:00]
[00:29:00] being attached to somebody 24 7. You become a unit, not an individual. Oh,
[00:29:07] Cris: that's the way I look at it. I love you more than you can know. I did not know this about you and I just, I love you more and more oh, well I respected. Cause I've often said if that it did happen, they'd have to live next door cuz they're not living in my house.
[00:29:22] so I love hearing your kind of. Like back and forth and you're yeah. It's, that was our
[00:29:27] Venita: solution. Yeah, because we drive each other crazy when we're together all the time. It's like, oh my God, I need my space. that's
[00:29:33] Cris: hilarious. Do you have any advice for the listeners because you've gone up both the studio ranks your you experience in the independence.
[00:29:41] Is there anything you would wanna impart? Yes. To
[00:29:45] Venita: not wait to be in a hurry because the days and the years go by super fast and a lot of people get into a comfort zone where they pay their bills, whatever it, and it's easy to [00:30:00]say, take chances when you're afraid you might wind up homeless, but there's ways to do things.
[00:30:05] And it's really through network. You know, I've I learned that I used to think I'm strong. I can do it all myself I'll do. And the truth is I'm only as good as my friends. And that really is the truth. I think that's the advice network, your as asshole. And I used to think networking was something that you did.
[00:30:25] I don't wanna say phony, but like you did it to network for networking's sake and that's not really the truth. The truth is to genuinely be interested in other people and what they're doing. And it's amazing how that comes back to you. It's an exchange of creative energy friend. Opening a door to people just opening a door to people.
[00:30:46] A lot of us are afraid of people. They're shy. They're private, I'm extremely shy and it's hard. Oh my God. It's so hard for me to put my, I don't believe you
[00:30:56] Cris: at all. You're the one who, you're the one who are like, hi. [00:31:00]
[00:31:01] Venita: And that's, that's how I learned to deal with it. When I did X, do they put me on a podium where I had to address 540 dancers, skaters, whatever, and tell them what they were gonna be doing and how I was gonna be telling them what to do for the next six months.
[00:31:16] And. I had an outta body experience. I literally, I like got outta my body and looked down and went, oh my fucking God, everybody's looking at you. And then I went back into my body and I
[00:31:25] Cris: said, okay, this is
[00:31:28] Venita: what we're doing. And everybody listened to me and they were all like, Like believing me and listening and I realized, wow, they're actually respecting what I'm saying.
[00:31:39] And then I realized it was because I actually knew what I was saying. That that's, that's the secret you need to believe in yourself and what you're doing so that you can put yourself aside and do what the job at hand. And I, when I drive to the set in the morning to direct a little voice is going, are they really gonna think that you don't know what [00:32:00] you're doing?
[00:32:01] All that voice happens. And I say, okay, now shut the fuck up. And this is
[00:32:05] Cris: what we're doing.
[00:32:07] Venita: and then you get drawn into it and you get taken out of yourself. You become a vessel for what needs to be done. And that's why I love this business because it makes me come out of myself. And be a part of the greater thing.
[00:32:22] That's
[00:32:22] Cris: great. I'm incredibly shy too. And I used the festival circuit to work on that. Like I, I made APAC on myself. My, if there's a Q and a, you take part in it. And then I told myself, mm-hmm, like the general ones. Right. And, and then you everyone's awkwardly up there and nobody answers mm-hmm . And I was like, if that happens, if two seconds go by, you.
[00:32:44] So you never get that if I'm on stage with you Uhhuh because I, that is part of the pact with myself. Right? I answer the question and I I've gotten over a lot of that, that cuz stage fry. I'm I'm afraid of very few things. I have swung with sharks. I'm not kidding you. I [00:33:00] have jumped out of planes. I have bungee John.
[00:33:02] Like I have done all kinds of things being on stage to talk to a group of people. To this day still makes my knees like,
[00:33:11] Venita: like buckle. Well, my first Q and a, the very first time that I stood in front of a room full of people looking at me and asking me questions. I died. I literally, I was afraid I wasn't gonna be my tongue got dry.
[00:33:23] I couldn't speak while I was like, and then after the second or third time I started seeing the other people were just like me, that they were all nervous and that the audience was even nervous. And then I went, wait a minute, let me take control of this situation. If nobody would ask a question. I turn to one of the filmmakers and say, so how did you do the scene where you cut our head off and I would get it going.
[00:33:43] And once you get people talking about what they're passionate about, they forget about everything and it opens up the room, you gotta break the ice and sometimes you have to be the person willing to be the dork to do it. Yeah,
[00:33:54] Cris: yeah, yeah. No, I totally believe that this is where I kind of turned the table in.
[00:33:58] I'd
[00:33:59] Venita: actually like to know [00:34:00] what made you write the movie that you wrote. We talked about it a little bit, but what is the, the fire about the project?
[00:34:07] Cris: The Genesis of it? I'm not gonna give you the longwinded answer, cuz it's been given a few times on the podcast and I don't wanna have to cut it out. I'm being very mindful of not repeating myself too much.
[00:34:19] I would say it was 2018 around September. I came in, I was working for a friend of mine. He's a showrun and I came into his office and kind of asked something about whether I was gonna get back out there or so, I don't know. And I said almost subconscious, like just immediately outta my mouth. I was like, no, I'm done with that.
[00:34:36] I don't. Wanna be in a relationship. I'm perfectly happy on my own. And he's known me for many, many years. Like it's 20 years this year and he started laughing and I'm like, what? And he goes, there's a movie for you because he'd also. Had recently told me I was getting ready to go on the festival circuit with it's big or I just shot it the little short [00:35:00] yeah.
[00:35:00] At the house. I think that was the one. Yeah. And that's like my fourth short film and. He had recently said to me, something to the effect of, you know, you gotta stop doing that now and make a feature now, like, and we all have those friends who kind of point the obvious to you. Right. So I've been like, yeah, I do.
[00:35:16] I just, I'm trying to figure out what to make it. Cuz a feature's a big deal. Like you should have something to say. I, because I said, what do you mean? That's a good idea. And he goes, somebody who's decided they like to be single. And their friends are all their friends decide. They try to get them a relat.
[00:35:31] You know, like that conflict is a very funny film. And I was like, you know what, that's pretty hilarious. There is something there, Uhhuh and immediately my brain started going, there's something there, but there's something deeper that can be done with that. And so I took three, four months to think about it.
[00:35:49] And in that time that was September and my father passed away in October of that. So this was 2018 and he was [00:36:00] 97, had a very long life. I'm the youngest of six, you know? That was, it was, it was not unexpected that at some point in those latter years, we were gonna lose my dad, but my, my, my father passed away and my mom had passed away five years earlier than that.
[00:36:14] Suddenly after kind of you go through that moment of your now you're. Parentless you're a, a middle aged dophin and you kind of grieve the loss of that. You know, we've already grieved the loss of my mom. Now we've as a family grieved the loss of my dad and right around December, I kind of realized I woke up one day and I, a weight had lifted off of my shoulders.
[00:36:34] My parents weren't specifically nagging that I should be in a relationship, but I think they always wondered why it never was. It did come up. I've got an older sister who already had two kids, an older brother who had four kids, two gay brothers, like we've got the whole rainbow, those nieces and nephews.
[00:36:51] Summer trans summer, like the whole rainbow lives in my family. And I was like, well, they've already continued the family name. You don't need me to do that. If I'm [00:37:00] happy, I'm happy. Right. But they came from the silent generation. Not understand. They don't ne didn't necessarily understand that, but this weight lifted often.
[00:37:07] I'm like, I don't have to please
[00:37:08] Venita: anyone. That exactly happened to me, Chris. I'm not kidding. My mom died when I was young, but my dad, when he died, when I was 41st, I grieved for several months. And then one day, all of a sudden, a weight lifted. And I said to myself, I'm not trying to please him anymore. This is now.
[00:37:24] Yeah. All about me. And I don't have what a difference.
[00:37:28] Cris: Yeah. And the thing is we spend our lives, especially women. And I know men do too to a certain extent, but I don't think they're as a condition yeah. As women are. And also again, to go back to that point, we are raised to think our happiness is exterior to ourselves and it's given to us mm-hmm so that becomes very damaging.
[00:37:47] And also it's a scary thing to be single in our society. Well,
[00:37:50] Venita: and not, not with our society. I didn't, you read all the books by Colette and, um, Virginia war talking just
[00:37:56] Cris: globally. Just women globally, right? Yes.
[00:37:59] Venita: The [00:38:00] woman she should
[00:38:02] Cris: die. Well, yeah, society's made for couples. It just is. And there are women and I work in true crime, too podcasting and shows.
[00:38:10] I, I can tell you, there's a very big percentage of those stories that we tell that happen to do with a relationship where you look at it from the bird's eye view. You know, just the person looking at what happened to this woman or who's dead now. And you're like, why did you stay? And, you know, if that person was still alive, a good, a portion of that answer would be, I didn't wanna be single, they'd rather stay in a toxic relationship than to leave it.
[00:38:37] It it's
[00:38:37] Venita: fear being alone where conditioned of being alone. Yeah.
[00:38:41] Cris: And, and so when I started thinking about all of those things combined with, you know, my own story, whatever I'm. I gotta figure out the best, most clever and most impactful way to fold my own story into a script. And to address all of that with comedy, [00:39:00] because comedy's a very good teacher.
[00:39:03] You find yourself laughing and you don't realize that you're actually seeing the other person's
[00:39:08] Venita: viewpoint. Goldie Dawn. When I worked with her on a movie, uh, she had just done private Benjamin and we're talking
[00:39:15] Cris: about, I, I talk about private Benjamin all the time because she. At the altar, although he was an asshole, he cheated on her, but it's a little different than my film, but I love that film and I love Goldan.
[00:39:24] So go ahead. Sorry. It it's wonderful.
[00:39:26] Venita: And, and what Goldie said, said about comedy was she said, the reason that I do comedy is because there are things that I actually want to share with people about what I think about being a woman about life, whatever. And what I have found is that the best way to get people, to open the door, to hear things that they might otherwise resist.
[00:39:47] Is if you can make them laugh. Yep. And so that's exactly what you just said. And that's why like Archie bunker all in the family yep. Was so brilliant. Yep. Because it right in people's faces, mm-hmm, their prejudices. They're [00:40:00] small mind, bigoted ways of being, and it was just so blatant that people would laugh at it.
[00:40:04] Yeah. But they saw, they, they realized what was happening.
[00:40:09] Cris: When you can hit that right balance. It's brilliant. And I love private Benjamin. I watched it recently a couple of times when I was doing in the rewrite stage of my film. Mm-hmm because that is one of the very, very few films where a woman does walk away from a relationship.
[00:40:23] Yes. Now you wanna
[00:40:25] Venita: hear something? Wait, this is kind of important. Um, there, gold was having a fight with the two producers in her motor home about something. And when they left, I said, what was that about? And she goes, there's a scene in the movie where right. The day that she get married that evening, her husband is making her go a blowjob in the car.
[00:40:42] Right. Mm-hmm and they wanna cut it. Because they don't think America wants to see their sweet, uh, Goldie ha being forced to do that in this movie. And I said, absolutely not. Because you have to show just how low integrated that woman is going so that you can appreciate the journey of when [00:41:00] she finds
[00:41:00] Cris: herself.
[00:41:00] Not, not only that you're showing she, by keeping that scene, you're showing the world that we, as women were actually. Like he made her leave the party. Mm-hmm to give her that blowjob. Yeah. And then he forces her to have sex with. In the bathroom. Mm-hmm that he dies at. Yeah. Right. The most beautiful
[00:41:20] Venita: night.
[00:41:21] Romantic night of her life, supposedly
[00:41:25] Cris: and I loved her, her performance in that. Yeah. I I'm so happy. She fought for that. Mm-hmm because they were dead wrong. Yeah, that's correct.
[00:41:33] Venita: I respect Goldie a lot. Oh, Goldie's incredible. I love Goldie. She's so supportive of women. She. She's a great woman. She's UN underestimated.
[00:41:43] I think
[00:41:43] Cris: her trail blazing is undervalued.
[00:41:45] Venita: Yes, exactly. The point I'm trying and the fact that she was really cognizant of what she was doing. It wasn't a side thing that came out of the work she did. She was guiding it. Yeah. You know, really smart. So, yes, I think you're absolutely onto [00:42:00] something about comedy.
[00:42:01] If you can turn a Rocom on its head with an incredibly powerful, relevant, current topic. You've got
[00:42:10] Cris: something special. And then to, to answer before we started the podcast, I know you asked me why the podcast and I listened to a lot of podcasts and I watch a lot of interviews and I, all of that stuff to learn because the journey I'm on to make my film is one I've never been on before.
[00:42:28] I've been on a whole lot of sets. I've been on a whole lot of everything, but the, the, I think the most secret kept time on a film. How did you get from? I've got an idea to first day of shoot, right? When the money came and my film is too big for crowdfunding, which nearly killed me for one of my shorts. I don't know how you do it.
[00:42:54] You are like my superhero. I don't know how you do it. It nearly killed me to raise $5,000 for one of [00:43:00] my films,
[00:43:00] Venita: but it is literally when I started, I put myself in a mode where I know I'm gonna be sucked into this whole networking thing. And, uh, I can't tell you how many people I talk to on a daily basis.
[00:43:12] So all day long about everything, about their lives, about their work, about it. And like I said, buying books, reading books, reading scripts, read. So I just give myself over to it for a month. And at the end of it, it's over, it's difficult. Cuz sometimes five people at one time are calling me, texting me, trying to talk to me on the screen.
[00:43:30] I'm like, oh my God, but it's, it's a wild ride. I
[00:43:33] Cris: mean the most rewarding thing I found when I did it was that people came out of the woodwork that from high school or from something and all of a sudden you get exactly what I'm saying. Like, and you're like, oh my goodness. Yeah, people were paying attention.
[00:43:48] I have a high
[00:43:48] Venita: school friend who literally two days ago donated $500. I have not him since I was 14 years old and I. Oh, my God, is this really you? And [00:44:00] he goes, yeah, I've been washing your career. It's like, oh my God.
[00:44:03] Cris: Yeah. Well, and the thing is because you keep making them, you know, that if I, I know that if I'm gonna donate to your fund, It's gonna get made.
[00:44:13] Here's a
[00:44:13] Venita: piece of information for upcoming filmmakers. If anybody's listening, uh, as far as platforms go, I learned a few films back, a producer said, we're not doing those platforms. They take 4%, whatever we're doing our own. I said, What, and he said, I create websites. I can do this. Uh, he created the same thing as a platform, as seed spark.
[00:44:34] He put the links in for PayPal, VE whatever. He had, the video, he created our ONED spark without us having to give any percentage to them. It all came straight to us. And what cheat and spark even said when I was doing it for moon, because we were forced to, through women in media, they said, Most like something like 95% of all the donations you're going to get, you are getting them from your [00:45:00] friends, family, and network.
[00:45:01] They, he, they said hardly anybody actually comes through just because they're on the platform. You might get one or two donations. Now, hearing that from the platform itself made me go, then why the fuck am
[00:45:11] Cris: I using the platform? It's just an
[00:45:13] Venita: intermediary. That's going to take money from my donations. And so this campaign right now, The Osan movie.com is in fact, the website campaign that we created that will morph into the actual website for the movie, once the campaign is done.
[00:45:30] And we're all of the donations that I'm getting are all I'm getting them. And it's the win-win situation. So people who are planning, crowdfunding, you might consider that are actually. There's more people doing this. I've noticed a few other people doing it. The seed spark Indiegogo and Kickstarter are truly not necessary unless you have a big campaign that you think is going to have an outreach because of something about the project.
[00:45:57] But if you just have a small film that [00:46:00] doesn't have some. Following. That's going to blow up,
[00:46:05] Cris: do it yourself. No, that's great advice. Cause I noticed you had a GoFundMe. Not a, no, it's not it wasn't on one of the platforms. It's not a GoFundMe. It's actually. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's just a website. There you go.
[00:46:15] That's a great. That's a great piece of advice. I had
[00:46:18] Venita: to have my friend who knows how to make websites created because I
[00:46:21] Cris: suck at things like that. I taught myself a Squarespace to make the website for my podcast. All of this is myself. I do the editing. I do all the social media. I built the website that you go to.
[00:46:32] I figured out which distribution platform I felt like joining and going. And at that point, it morphed into this idea of combining my own journey as a woman. That's single and happy, which is what my film is about with the journey of the film and getting it made. Excellent. And part of that is let's be really super transparent about the heartaches and the triumphs of me getting to that, that.
[00:46:58] Production pre-production and [00:47:00] production. Cuz right now I'm in not, I'm not even in development cuz I've lost development funds four times. Oh God. Like it is a roller coaster Uhhuh. You know, that day is heartbreaking and it's let me go buy some ice cream and you know, get in my field for, for a day. Let myself live with that.
[00:47:18] And then the next day. All right. What's the new plan. Mm-hmm how do I figure this out? Yep. Because there, there is no one path to getting a film made and that's what you learned. No, there's no manual that
[00:47:29] Venita: says how you get a movie made. Wouldn't that be nice? And it's also right now, it's really strange. In the old days, there was a path, there was a studios, there were production companies.
[00:47:39] You had to do it a certain way. Very regimented, very limited, but. The good news is it's opened up. It's the wild west out there with all the different streaming platforms. However, that's also the bad news because how the fuck do you reach all these people? It's confusing as hell. What platform is right for your project.
[00:47:59] Then to [00:48:00] find out how to try to navigate it to them and still keep a hold of it. It appears to me. For me personally, what's ideal is if you can get your project made yourself and then whether it's through AFM or full markets or Sundance or TIFF or whatever, present it, and then have people buy it to distribute it.
[00:48:21] Otherwise, if you have them, make it for, you know, finance it for you, you've lost total control of it. So it's a difficult journey for features, especially I'm in the same place you are right now. I do have a producing partner. Who's better at that than I am. He's like more of a producer kind of guy. That's good news because I'm not a very good self promoter when it comes to things like that.
[00:48:46] I'm not really a business person. I'm a filmmaker. And that's the frustration for many of us. We wanna be artists. We wanna make our art and we want somebody to hand us a bag of money so that we can just make it
[00:48:58] Cris: well. Yeah, but [00:49:00] again, it is called show business. As a friend of mine reminded me not show.
[00:49:04] that's true. But then do you really wanna break
[00:49:07] Venita: your film for what the distributor tell you is gonna sell? You know, you can't do that. You have to do it this way and use this actor. No, it's real. So you really want control of it when you're Antarctica
[00:49:18] an
[00:49:19] Cris: no. And that's why I'm like my, the producer I did who's the, I've got a PGA producer attached to it and primarily because.
[00:49:28] When we had our meeting, she, she understood that this is my film. I am the right director for this film. I've written because it's my story. And
[00:49:36] Venita: even yourself as a director, you
[00:49:37] Cris: have, so let's do a shout out to Osan and how do they, how does everyone reach you and, and try to help you if they wanna help with it and maybe give a little explanation of what it is.
[00:49:46] Okay.
[00:49:46] Venita: Yes, it is a short film. We're shooting it in a beautiful home in Los Angeles that just fell into my lap. It's like a Rockstar's mansion. They gave it to me to shoot in, which made me go, okay, we're doing this. And we have an offer [00:50:00] out to a, like I mentioned a really cool actor. Uh, it's a great story.
[00:50:04] It's already a semi-finalist in Holly shorts. I, that was the only festival I tested the waters and we did well in it. I have an incredible team. Put together that you can see who they are on this website and we're ready to go. We're gonna shoot in two months. We're three quarters of the way finance, but we need that last quarter to kick us up into being fully prepared.
[00:50:27] So, uh, the website is the Osan movie.com. Osan is spelled O S S a N, which by the way, do you know what an Oshan
[00:50:35] Cris: is? Was reading something about it on your website? I don't know if I remember it, but, and for listeners, by the way, I'll have that website in the show notes and on the website, my own website, blissful spinster.
[00:50:46] So thank you. They'll be able to find it. Well,
[00:50:48] Venita: I read an article about a new thing happening in Japan, where their culture they're lacking male authority figures in households. And that's a very important thing in the Japanese [00:51:00] culture. For some reason, they're dropping out and they developed a service like a rent and.
[00:51:06] It's called OSAs and you can go to an agency and rent any kind of man that you want. It can be. They have military backgrounds, professors, artists, school teachers, you name it, grandpas, young men, middle aged men. It's not a dating service. It's strictly renting a male authority figure that they can do anything that you need.
[00:51:26] They can help you with your kids. They can go shopping for you. It's giving you a man. And
[00:51:32] Cris: it,
[00:51:32] Venita: I thought, wow. Brilliant. We could really use that here, I think. But think about teenage boys who have no male authority figure in a family, it would be really helpful. It's like a big brother program that we used to have.
[00:51:45] I don't know if that still exists. So anyway, I was thinking about that and then I thought about a scenario where an Oshan could be absolutely invaluable, but in the very mystical, magical way. So it's, it's one of my cautionary tale movies, like a [00:52:00] Twilight zone, but it. I think it's brilliant. and, uh, it's going to be a beautiful film too.
[00:52:06] Yeah. We have book in a company that creates real snow in front of the house. And so we're snowing in the entire front of a mansion with real snow and then adding visual effects on top. It that's why in all of the postings I make, we have snow Globes because snow Globes are a key element to this movie.
[00:52:24] In fact, we are. In our own snow Globes. If you really look at snow Globes, that the little scenarios that go on in there, much of my movie is shot through windows. And you realize that it's because every element is act its own little snow globe. That's
[00:52:38] Cris: great. I'm so happy you came on my podcast. This has been a great conversation.
[00:52:42] Oh, I'm so
[00:52:43] Venita: glad you asked now. Seriously, a podcast aside. This was really fun. So thank you, Chris. I enjoyed it. Thank you
[00:52:49] Cris: so much for tuning into bliss. Spinster. If any of these conversations are
[00:52:52] Venita: resonating with you, please subscribe on apple podcast. Google podcast
[00:52:56] Cris: or wherever you get your podcast, you can find bliss will spinster on [00:53:00]Instagram and Twitter.
[00:53:00] And through our website, BLIS will spinster.com. Again, thanks so much for joining me on this journey and until next week go find your.