Surviving Hollywood

Our guest on this episode is the multi-talented Eddie Flake. Johnny first met Eddie Flake about 7 years ago in a commercial acting class, which for both of them was their first acting class in Los Angeles. In those last several years Eddie has worked in both the music and film industry. He started off producing music and engineering alongside people like Snoop Dogg and worked production on some of the most well-known reality TV shows such as, "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila," and "I Want To Work for Diddy." Since then, his acting career has taken off with roles in shows like the "X-Files" and "Lucifer" and working with Aubrey Plaza on the feature film reboot of "Child's Play." We talk about how acting was never on his radar, moving to Canada to build credits and self-producing his own content. 

The man, the myth, the legend. If you are a fan of our podcast you may have heard us mention the award-winning short we produced called, "Papua." Well today we talked with the man who shot Papua himself, our friend and amazingly talented Director of Photography, Dan Rink. He's always working so it was a pleasure to make some time for us to have a conversation about working behind the camera. We talk to Dan about whether film school was worth it, the types of directors he gets along best with and what types of projects he is most passionate about. 

In today's episode we sit down with our friend, actress and filmmaker, Armida Lopez. She is a talented Latina who recently just wrapped production on her new short film, "Made in America." A film the she wrote, directed and produced, based on the true story of her mom immigrating to the United States from El Salvador. She also talks to us about moving to Atlanta to work in the Southeast acting market, hiring and working with a PR firm to advance her career and working on the feature film "Boss Level" with Frank Grillo and Mel Gibson. 

Today we are joined by Hollywood Director and friend, Paul Garrison Dean Hogan! We talk about working with Austin while directing TruTv's "You Can Do Better," how Paul got his start in the industry, and advice for young filmmakers.

Today we are joined by actor and friend, Mike Dearie! We talk about starting off working in non-union projects, getting cast in Jane the Virgin through Gina Rodriguez and how working with Austin on TruTV was the worst day of his life. JK. Enjoy this one! 

Today we are joined by actor, writer, producer, and friend, Brian Shakti! We talk about the acting market in New York vs Los Angeles, writing/producing your own short films, and how he mentally prepared to play the title character of "Papua" in the short film we all produced together. 

Today we decided to kickback and just talk about current updates in our acting life. Austin talks about a part in a feature film that he got last minute without auditioning. Aaron recently auditioned for a David Fincher movie and Johnny talks about his 7 year anniversary of moving to Los Angeles. We also share some of our favorite iTunes fan reviews, a song submission and our thoughts on the new Joker movie. 

Johnny first met Jozanne when they worked together as teaching artists for the East LA Classic Theatre Company and they have been friends ever since. She came by the podcast today to talk about her new book, "BEAUTIFUL: Unashamed and Unafraid," based on her life. It's an amazingly powerful story that evolved from a one-woman play she wrote and produced, to a full book now available at Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Her book Beautiful has also recently been optioned into a movie by an A-List celebrity and is currently in development. 

Today our bearded friend, Ben Dukes, graced us with his presence on the podcast. Ben is an actor, musician and SAG-AFTRA aficionado we met in our acting class years ago. He's a big dude with a lot of talent and class. We talk about him campaigning for the SAG-AFTRA board, getting discovered and performing on Craig Ferguson and working with Renee Zellweger on the Netflix TV series "What If."

It's the start of a new week and what a better way to kick if off with the inspiring Samantha Jayne. Samantha is the creator and star of the upcoming TV series, "Quarter Life Poetry," which will be airing on a new adult swim type network called CAKE on the FX Network. She tells us about the inspiration behind Quarter Life Poetry, taking the project to Sundance and the amazing process of how this turned from an Instagram account into a full fledged short-from TV series on a major TV network. The series premieres on Sept 25th on FXX.