Surviving Hollywood

Today we had a great conversation with up and coming director/filmmaker, Sophia Banks! Sophia shares her experience directing her sci-fi short film UNREGISTERED, taking it to Tribeca and getting CAA representation. She's also currently working on pitching her film as a potential network series and is definitely a director to look out for this year. 

Johnny worked with Sarah Colonna on Insatiable on Netflix and had the opportunity to tie her up and nearly torture her. Lucky guy. Sarah sat down with us via zoom and talked about her early days of writing and acting on Chelsea Lately, her comedy tour and how she booked a series role on Insatiable. Best of all she shares how she worked on Bar Rescue through a tweet to Jon Taffer. 

Episode 56. We've lost count of what day it is during the coronavirus lockdown, but fortunately for us we are still able to get amazing guests to join us on a zoom call. Today we are joined by the hilarious stand up comedian Mark Normand. He was willing to join us from NYC and talk all things comedy. We talked about him being a guest on Joe Rogan's podcast, working with Jerry Seinfeld and Louis CK and how he's been pitching his life story to various TV networks. A great, down to earth guy and one of our best pods yet. 

Our friend, actress and filmmaker Armida Lopez jumped on a call with us to talk about all the options currently available to actors and freelancers right now during the pandemic. She talks about unemployment, rent relief, financial assistance and getting certain banks and credit cards to freeze payments during the Coronavirus. Great info!

Hollywood has completely shut down due to growing concern over the Coronavirus (COVID-19) and we are officially in self-quarantine. Because Johnny has been sick ever since coming back from filming in Mexico City and we are practicing social distancing, he ended up calling into the podcast. We talked about how things are being handled here in town, the concern over rent and bills now that no one is working and where the future of the industry is headed. 

Johnny is still out of town shooting and we had our buddy, actor and stand up comedian Sean Fawaz join us on the podcast to talk about getting started in the comedy world, how COVID-19 is affecting shows and how he stays motivated. Stay healthy friends!

On this episode Johnny and Aaron share some stories about questionable #Metoo moments they both experienced and Austin just couldn't handle it so he bailed. Classic Austin. Johnny talks about his first time booking a non-union pilot when he first started acting and how he was asked to do a lot more than he ever anticipated and Aaron shares a story of going to a celebrities house for a delightful chat that could have possibly turned into a Deadline news article.

On this episode of SHP we sat down with actress Olivia Dudek to discuss her latest role as the lead in the upcoming feature film "Ana." We talk about what it takes to carry a film, how she landed the role and how getting so close to becoming one of the next Power Rangers really shaped her career and life. 

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Today we sat down with actor Alberto Zeni who is currently starring in the new season of Narcos: Mexico. He talked about his experience shooting in Mexico City and working on such a notable TV show, the audition process and his new business endeavor (a version of kickstarter only better) which created some exciting tension between him and Aaron. Sparks flew!

Johnny first met Al Coronel on the set of a spoken word piece directed by Andrea Navedo and written by their mutual friend Jozanne Marie. Johnny played Al's son as he was getting ready to be deployed to war. Since then we have followed Al's acting journey and he has been steadily working on numerous TV shows such as American Crime Story, Westworld, 68 Whiskey and big movies like Logan. Most recently he had the opportunity to shadow direct on the new TV show LA's Finest, where he got to see the process of directing a TV show from beginning to end. Al's had a great career and he talks to us about what has and has not worked for him, a huge new project he recently booked and how he eventually hopes to continue directing.