Enter the world of filmmaker Chris White as he discusses his latest creation, Electric Jesus. The film is a coming of age comedy/drama that follows the exploits of a fictional 80's Christian Rock Hair Metal Band. It stars Judd Nelson (The Breakfast Club), Brian Baumgartner (The Office), and newcomers Sarah Hutchinson and Andrew Eakle. Chris and his wife, Emily Reach White, made the jump into the world of movie creation after working as public school teachers and since have created many independent short and feature length films. For Chris, this even included a stint working as a co-producer of several episodes of Star Trek Continues. With Electric Jesus, Chris and Emily have gone much bigger with a million dollar budget, big name actors, and national distribution. It will be released for digital stream nationally on November 2nd!  We discuss it all- making authentic art, hair metal music, evangelical culture in the 80s, the awkwardness and awesomeness of it all, and how the grace, forgiveness, and humanity that is genuinely in the best of faith may be just what the world and all of its judges still need to remember.

Coming off a fine arts education at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Larry Confino and his roommate decided to go into business together. Right away they began to rent the very expensive equipment needed to make a go in the filmmaking world and created a company on their personal credit cards.  Their first films were documentary behind the scenes of Hollywood films. This led to them being able to buy their own gear and a path of doing great work for clients with professionalism and dedication while working on personal passion projects. Larry has since created several full length feature documentary films and his own business called Media Sector Inc. He has done work for HBO, PBS, Canon, Disney, and more. His personal projects "Trezoros: The Lost Jews of Kastoria," "Psychedelicized: The Story of the Electric Circus," and his current project with the working name "The 50 States of Sustainability" are all high level feature length productions. He chronicles the benefits of taking chances, the benefits of building a team full of talent, making training videos that literally save lives, raising a creative family with a nontraditional career path, and how now is very well the time to venture into the industry with an entrepreneurial mindset since the pro gear has gone down in price and the old career path guarantees of a gold watch upon retirement are over.

Adam is a Rock 'N' Roll explorer who considers himself an archeologist of sound, digging up that which may be lost to history. Since 1971 he has been into music and was always the guy who made mixed tapes for friends and family trying to expose people to the world beyond the Top 40. From 2005 - 2016 he shared his musical tastes on the online platform LIVE 365. He then moved his show to another online platform- England's Radio.co. Since 2017, he has aired his show on WSRX 107.9 FM, Vernon NJ’s local non-commercial radio station.  There, his shows range from "The Rock 'N' Roll Timeline" to his most recent ventures where he focuses on rock and roll singles released during the epic decade of the 1970s called "70's - The Music That Changed The World." Now In 2021, his newest show is called "The 80's." Adam is a dedicated music lover who spends his stolen hours producing these shows in his off time from his job working in the medical supply industry.  Catching his voice on the radio the other day made it very clear that he is both a complete radio professional and one who can school us for hours about all things rock and roll.

Joanna Smith is a mental health and arts advocate who has dedicated much of her adult life to the study of art history and working in the world of museums. After earning a masters degree in Art History from American University she spent time interviewing Holocaust survivors to help share their stories for the Holocaust Museum. She currently works as in image and footage rights and reproductions field with Bridgeman Images whose collection is focused on fine art, cultural, and historical content. Joanna shares her journey navigating the worlds that surround art history and balancing her own mental well being along the way. 

Di Shawn J. Gandy is an actor, director, genealogist/historian, and playwright. After decades working on stage with his original steeped in history productions, he took time in 2020 to direct the independent film Love And The Game, based on the book by Daniel Ali. He studied acting at Woody King Jr.'s New Federal Theater in NY, George Street Playhouse Education in NJ, and Jared Kelner's Actor’s Approach Acting Academy. He is an NJACT Award-nominated playwright for An American Tree based on his research that "traces the lives of two generations of his paternal ancestors who lived through, slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow." He co-wrote the play, Thy Will Be Done based on a historical telling of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, which became an Official Selection at the DC Black Theater Festival. He serves as a board member of NJCAC (New Jersey Creative Arts Collaborative) and is a genealogist and family historian, who has created content for Ancestry.com. He and his wife, Dawn, cofounded Behind The Veil Productions, an award-nominated Theatre Company based in NJ. Beyond all of this, Di Shawn is also an ordained minister and serves as pastor of Love And Truth Ministries, a grassroots church ministry that he started in 2016.

Anthropologist and Visual Artist Marc Jablonski grew up in the home that the visual artists/art professors Andrea Geller and Carl Jablonski built. He is a documentary minded playwright whose musicals, songs, sound pieces, and drama performances that deal with the complexity of humanity’s experience with each other and as an individual. He discusses his generation’s desire to both save the world and at the same time just save their own personal world’s enough to stay sane, the return of theater, and making your own way in the arts post college. With that, he describes how the stage and the flow state it offers has been the way he learned to deal with his own anxiety. He has spent much of his working life past college working in media marketing by day and sound design by night for his many creative collaborators. He has infiltrated the marketing world (at AKA NYC), with his skillsets as a means to have an income to support all of his creative endeavors, but to also be a part of all that he loves with the altruistic purpose of trying to make it all affordable for the people. He reminds those on his team that the marketing data points are all about the human experience that will benefit individuals with what art can do. Just past the recording date of this episode he now works on his masters in Anthropology at The New School and is continuing to work on his own musicals, songs, and so much more that very well may directly affect how we all experience the arts in the future.

Deacon Todd Rushing and Dr. Tom Cacciola, are two friends who walk together almost daily, and... who may just create their own podcast called "The Deacon and the Doctor." This recording was made in the midst of their own test recordings, an ever present recognition that the act of walking together leads to very creative and complex conversations, and going back and forth in consideration of creating such a media endeavor. My plan was to give them a nudge by having them record their first, and hopefully not last, episode here on The Stolen Hours. Their unique insights on life include, of course, perspective on the mind, the body, and the soul.

Robert Gizzi is a saxophone player, a keyboard player, an innovative high school music educator, a marching and jazz band director, and an overall nice guy. He has created nuanced music electives like Guitar, Music Technology, and Piano lab as he has seen a rise in the amount of students who produce their own music in the past five years.  Bob followed directly in his music educator father's footsteps who taught music for 37 years while gigging the whole time. With that he also has a love for both teaching music and for performing music as much as possible. With Bob's dedication to playing and affinity for the improv of Jazz and the volume of Rock he has the versatility of being a musician who knows how to play the music he and his audience loves at the drop of a hat. In this conversation he describes the culture of a gigging musician's life throughout the New Jersey music scene and how he brings that back to his students. After 20 years in the classroom he now may be found on stage performing next to one of those who he helped set on the same musician's path.

Brynen Sosa has dedicated much of his life to playing music on the guitar. Now find his music out there under his own name, his band "Mythology", "Beebop and Rocksteady", the punk band "Bad Hormones", "The Pinstripe Players" and discover that he has no problem making music across a wide spectrum of musical genres and rock history. His musical tastes hit every arena from 90's alternative, to Doo-wop, to Classic Rock, to the musicals that he performed in high school. He names influences from Kurt Cobain to Frank Zappa. His band, Mythology, has opened for superstar bands like Yes and Peter Frampton over the years and has produced several albums that fully embrace the genre of progressive rock, but also put out an alter ego album that is full of 40's style Jazz inspired compositions called "The Pinstripe Players." Brynen can't help but keep creating and performing even as he juggles his career as an inside sales rep, a guitar teacher, husband, and father. This recording catches him on the road, between jobs and/or recording sessions, in a Quick Check parking lot somewhere in North Jersey.

Julia Crafton was born into a life of music in 2005. Her parents set up her and her twin brother Avery's high chairs right in the mixing room of their recording studio. They grew up with the likes of Richie Havens, Broadway performers, jazz artists, visual artists, poets, etc. joining her family dinnertime throughout her life. Julia's songs are a combination of the "sounds, history, and love from all those musicians who helped raise her." Her debut album that came out this year (2021), "Woodstock Child" is also full of some of those professional musicians playing along with her in the mix. "At 15, she has been a "Featured Artist" at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art's virtual "Balcony Bar from Home Series" in partnership with ETHEL, and has performed her own shows at New York's iconic "Bitter End" and "The Cutting Room" stages. Our conversation discusses much of this life steeped in the Arts and how Julia is forging her path as a creator.