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ArtWalk Podcast - Filmmaker Eric Latek (EP #08) - Indie Filmmaking: In Episode #08 of the ArtWalk Podcast, Aaron Massey talks with filmmaker Eric Latek about his process of filming documentaries, narrative indie films, and creating behind the scenes visual effects tools for motion picture films of all sizes. A discussion around ‘pacing’ in films comes to the forefront. Eric and Aaron let out some of their movie nerd sides, and dive into filmmaking greats like Kubrick, Nolan, and Spielberg, and whether or not nostalgia plays a part in a film becoming “a classic”. Was it a great film? Or was it nostalgia talking?

Items discussed in the podcast….

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Branch (Full Movie):

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ArtWalk Podcast (EP #07) Solo Thoughts: Holiday Special. Tis the Season! Welcome to the 1st ever Holiday Special of the ArtWalk Podcast. Aaron discusses three things he will be changing in the new year of 2022. And also four things that he is going to be doing as career goals and habits. A year in review of accomplishments, things that didn't work out, moving forward, and ultimately a time to separate for reflection.

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Welcome to the ArtWalk Podcast Episode #07, Solo Thoughts: Holiday Special (3 Things I’m Changing in 2022)

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ArtWalk Podcast (EP #06) Andy Rossi: Actor, Writer, and Director Andy Rossi talks shop with Aaron. Andy's directorial debut Dead Body has entered the '21-'22 film festival circuit and taken audiences by storm, winning several awards. Andy and Aaron get into all kinds of fun stories in this episode including moving west to Los Angeles, DJ'ing together, and eventually working as actors and filmmakers over the years.

Welcome to the ArtWalk Podcast Episode #06, Andy Rossi, Dead Bodies and L.A. Stories

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After finding a seat and settling in on a nearly empty train car, I struggled to close my eyes to get the much needed sleep that my body beckoned for. My mind swirled in thought and kept me from falling into any kind of rest. The trip would take just under ten hours, a lengthy timeframe indeed. I was traveling a pretty good distance so there would be plenty to witness along the way. I had heard nice things about Portugal, so I was eager.

My thoughts jumped back and forth from my time in Madrid to ultimately thoughts of my brother. It had been almost a year since his death, and a little longer since I last saw him. We grew up in a small town in Ohio called East Palestine. It was a modest childhood, and our parents were generous with their love towards us, giving us the freedom to roam about the neighborhood to make our own adventures. There was always food on the table, the home-cooked kind; David and I usually fighting for the leftovers. We were two years separated in age, I the elder, and we got along well for the most part. The both of us played in the woods a lot as children, along with some of the other neighborhood boys. We made rope swings that would carry our small, delicate bodies over steep, sheer ledges of limestone, out into the floating air, dodging various tree branches as we swung through it, yelling towards the earthy floor thirty or forty feet below. Water gun fights in the thick woods during the hot summers were one of David’s favorite things, and something he was really good at. He could sneak up on almost anyone. David was fast and light, and his feet barely touched the ground when he ran. I always preferred him to be on my team. 

As we got older David and I grew into our own interests. I’m not sure where he obtained his free spirit from. Both of our parents were quite conservative in their makeup and philosophies. I remember seeing a change in his viewpoints during his high school years when he began to focus heavily on astronomy courses; perhaps a juxtaposition on his religious upbringing. He began to form his own opinions, instead of taking up our father’s. He started to become his own man, with liberal ideas on the world. When David was fifteen he saved enough money from cutting neighborhood lawns, and purchased a used telescope from a yard sale a few blocks away from our house. It was not in the best shape, but it worked. He would sit outside on the back deck of our home, in the muggy summer nights of the midwest, sometimes for hours, and stare up into space through that warped glass while the crickets played their songs. He must have seen so much nothing, and everything in between it, that it made him crave the why and the how and the who. I only wished to dream as big as he did. 

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ArtWalk Podcast (EP #05) Andre Welsh: Low-budget indie filmmaking is the topic of conversation during this ArtWalk Podcast interview. Andre is a filmmaker all-in-all, including being a director, cinematographer, editor and screenwriter who has overcome minimal budgets and small crews to create some of the indie world's most beautiful images on screen. He is a crafty storyteller that redefines the thriller genre with his comedic beats sprinkled in, in all the right places. His new film Disrupted is a neo-noir thriller that exemplifies all of the previous notations.

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Welcome to the ArtWalk Podcast Episode #05, Andre Welsh, Low-Budget Indie Filmmaking.

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This is the first interview in the ArtWalk Podcast series. Ryan McCann is an artist, actor, photographer, musician, and much more. In this conversation, Aaron and Ryan discuss creative freedom, discovering the flow state, how to find balance in your creative life, and what determines success in the creative world.

Welcome to the ArtWalk Podcast Episode #04, Ryan McCann, Finding Balance In Your Creative Work.

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Bobby Fraley scoured public police records through the Van Nuys public library internet system, seeking out anyone convicted of art theft in the past few years. He struggled to find a single report on this matter. He mentioned hiring a private investigator to the photographer who took Bobby’s portrait, but he balked at the idea, stating to Bobby that, “It was just a photo.”

It was rumored that Bobby Fraley took that comment personally. So personally, that he vowed to ruin that very photographer’s local business, by training himself the art of photography over the next ten years, opening up a portrait studio right next door to the photographer’s place of business, and running session discounts so attractive, that Bobby would steal all of the portrait business in the area, ending his long time rival’s career, and putting his shop out of business. One of the problems with that long term plan for Bobby was that the only building next door to the photographer’s business was a McDonald’s. Bobby claimed that he would find a way to partner up with the burger company in his scheme to make things right for the community.

After almost three months of mediocre investigative work by Bobby, he had decided to purchase advertising space on a large billboard, located at the corner of Fulton and Ventura Boulevard near the Casa Vega restaurant. The sign simply had a photo of the stolen portrait with the words: Have You Seen Me?, as well as Bobby’s cell phone number at the bottom of the bright yellow signage. There it was, Bobby’s face, with his phone number, for the entire Valley to see.

The calls came pouring in. Day after day, Bobby sifted through the hundreds of voicemails that he received, most of them prank calls made by vulgar tongued teenagers, a few odd characters claiming they were with Bobby on the UFO craft that had abducted them in ‘83, and also some that had a love interest toward the man with the sunburned photo, which by now had faded from his everyday look.

Bobby soon became such a local legend, that the neighborhood’s small companies would offer free merchandise to him, in hopes of some needed exposure. One clothier even began making Bobby Italian silk capes, free of charge, but in exchange for some word of mouth advertising when folks asked him about his eye-catching style.

Bobby enjoyed the exposure at first, but felt that all of the attention he was receiving was steering his investigation in the wrong direction. He let people know, on 4” x 6” flyers he had printed, that the purpose of all of this hubbub was not about him, but about the famed portrait of him. Through Bobby’s efforts, he was able to raise a reward for information leading to the reacquisition of the stolen photo. The sixty-eight dollars could be all that was between Bobby and recovering the object.

Bobby’s background in mathematics allowed him to calculate the prize money into a tangible offering so that the common person could see the value that it stored. One would be able to purchase eighty cans of tuna, if done so during the Tuesday sale, when the price dropped to .79 cents a can. This would leave the buyer just four cents short of purchasing the eighty-first can, when including the California sales tax rate. A metric, according to Bobby Fraley, that could “easily be found in the cracks of sidewalk, underneath the parking meters along Ventura Boulevard.”

One evening, while Bobby Fraley sipped a mint tea in the cozy confines of his 650 square foot apartment, he received an interesting phone call. A woman spoke to him on the other end of the line, claiming that she knew where the stolen portrait was. She told Bobby, that her name was Janice. She told Bobby, that she was the one who had stolen the framed artwork the night of October 29th, 2011. She told Bobby, that she wanted to meet him in two hours, at the laundromat on Moorpark Street, when the clock struck midnight.

- Part Two.

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In this episode, we discuss the job of the artist. What does it mean to be an artist, in any creative field. What is your duty? How do you produce work consistently and often? Let’s take a deep dive into some thoughts around productivity, and “quality quantity”.

Welcome to the ArtWalk Podcast Episode #03, Solo Thoughts, The Job of the Artist.

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Bobby Fraley was a person of interest. No one was quite sure how he arrived at the position. His whole life was spent doing the right things; saying hello to the strangers he passed on the sidewalk, cleaning the dishes at home, and even cutting his neighbor’s lawn. Twice in one week back in June.

Bobby woke at 6:00 a.m. every day, including Sundays. His morning routine consisted of the usual bathroom stuff, and he drank his coffee black from the machine he was gifted at the end of the year party for Stewart, Kilner, & Glaxo, where he worked as an accountant. He made his bed daily, and even washed his car at home, using the finest cloth to dry it, so as not to scratch his 2006 white Toyota Camry that he purchased from a man named Caesar, who owned a used car dealership on the Northside of Van Nuys.

Due to his early waking schedule, Bobby was often tired, and he refused to take naps, as he claimed it would ruin his energy later in the day. He normally dressed in khaki slacks, brown Steve Madden dress shoes, and a short sleeve button up shirt, colors varying from white to cream. He combed his hair twice a day, parted left to right, and wore brown framed glasses that he found at the local thrift store, for which he never changed the prescription of.

Bobby Fraley was the usual man, an everyman of common status, living out his life in the hopes that his lunchtime bagel would stay fresh in the Saran Wrap he folded it in early that morning. But Bobby would never get to eat his plain bagel on the day of October 2nd, 2011, for he was punched square in the face by a teenage misfit who was robbing the gas station market Bobby had gone in to retrieve some change, four quarters for a dollar, so that later that day he could purchase a Nestle Crunch bar from the vending machine on the third floor of the office building he worked at just one block south of Ventura Boulevard in Sherman Oaks.

Bobby eventually quit his accounting job that same month, declaring to his boss that he lacked the patience for numbers. He said that numbers acted like children; stubborn in their way, always mocking him behind his back. Bobby’s boss thought this was an interesting perspective, and accepted Bobby’s two week notice. Bobby Fraley never executed the remaining two weeks of work. He simply started waking up whenever his body wanted to. Bobby started to put his morning toothpaste into his dark roasted coffee, claiming that he found a process to quicken his morning routine, meanwhile giving his breath the much needed minty boost that he strived for.

Bobby Fraley started to enjoy wearing capes, and eating spicy tacos at lunch from the various Mexican food trucks that The Valley had to offer. He was never one for the “hot stuff”, but had somehow morphed his eating habits to include the likes of jalapeno, cayenne, and innumerable sorts of hot sauces. Those seated at the outdoor tables near Bobby, would often hear sounds emanating from his direction while he ate.

“Yip yip yeeeooowww!” Bobby would yell, after taking several continuous bites of his fiery dish. And if there were less than seven people eating near him, he would usually buy the lot a round of horchata on his way out.

“Interesting,” said the middle-aged Mexican woman, sipping her milky drink, as she watched Bobby walk away while his red and black plaid polyester cape waved through the air behind him.

Bobby began taking long naps in the park after his lunchtime meals, letting the sun’s UV rays dive deep into his epidermis. Sometimes Bobby slept so long in one position, that the sunburns he developed left him days later with peeling skin across his forehead and nose. A devastating blow to many, but Bobby carried on in all confidence, even once getting his portrait taken from a local photographer while his face looked like a crab shell. The photographer asked Bobby if he could use the portrait in his upcoming art show. Bobby obliged the man, telling him his image was “fair use,” and to, “use at will”.

The portrait was such a hit, that Bobby’s photo was featured on page five of the Van Nuys Tribune. And in even greater news, the 20 x 24 inch framed portrait of Bobby Fraley was stolen from the art show just a day after that publication was released. A sad day in the art world for all. A sadder day for the sunburned man, who vowed to track down the thief of he, himself, in print form, Bobby Fraley.

- Part One.

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I wondered around a bit in the streets of Madrid after a decent night’s rest. The morning was chilly, but the sun was out, so I stopped for a moment near a bench, letting my face absorb the sun. I stumbled upon an empty coffee shop near a small neighborhood park, and ordered a cafe con leche from a Swede named Nils. The shop was a tiny, narrow place, maybe seating four or five at the bar with a few small tables and cheaply made chairs placed directly along the dark cherry red painted wall that hung pictures of various Spanish figures of history.

Nils was a tall, slim, bearded gent who was very kind, and we talked of the world, politics, and art. He was a musician living here in the city for almost a decade now. His clothing was weathered, and the sole of his right sneaker detached from its base, and snapped back up with each step, fighting for its last days.

I became hungry after the potent coffee Nils served me started to work my empty stomach over. I asked him if they served any breakfast food.

“Not really,” Nils responded, “but I can fix something up for you.” Nils walked his slappy shoe through the crooked doorframe that led back to the kitchen.

I became unsure of his proposition, “What do you have back there?” I asked. I started to become even more unsure of a kitchen that did not regularly serve food.

Nils leaned his head over, back in sight through the doorframe, and simply told me, “It’s very good, trust me. Simple, but very good.”

A long slice of sourdough bread, toasted with minced tomato, salt, and olive oil was the breakfast he brought out to me, on the house. I was pleased with the taste, and how uncomplicated it was. It was unexpectedly delicious. As I ate my delicacy of a breakfast, Nils told me of a hostel in Rome that he had stayed at, and recommended it when I visit the capital city. I told him I would surely look into it.

An old man entered the quiet cafe, spoke a few verses in Spanish to Nils who then responded to the man quickly and keenly and handed him a fifty cent piece. The old man delivered over a newspaper, which Nils then folded and slid under his left arm as the man walked out of the shop. Nils looked at me and explained that the old man had just sold him a communist newspaper. 

“Do you favor that political agenda?” I asked him. 

“It is the neighborhood, and not my particular political view,” Nils replied, “I am actually quite liberal and do these things to balance out the coffee shop’s reading selection.”

“A true businessman,” I said. 

Nils smiled back. 

“Do you have wifi?” I asked. 

“No,” he said almost smugly, “I believe that the internet is anarchy, so I do not wish to have it in here. Positive and negative all mixed together,” he shook his head. 

I responded, “Isn’t that life in general though? Positive and negative all mixed together? Then the world is anarchy.” 

Nils looked at me with a profound grin and he took my finished plate off of the counter. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Nils, the Swedish liberal hosting a communist cafe in the middle of the Iberian Peninsula, serving tomato toast to those willing to lend an ear for a bit. We said our goodbyes after a while, and I carried out into the Spanish day.

I’ve thought of Nils from time to time, wondering if he ever found success in music. Wondering if he instead, joined the communist party. Wondering if he still collects political newspapers from the wandering folks of the neighborhood. Wondering if I can replicate that damn tomato toast when I get back to the states.