Filmmakers, Musicians & Artists discuss their Creative Process
Where does our intuition come from? How are lifelong creative partnerships formed and what role do friendship and personal connection play? How do our personal lives influence the art we make?
Actress · Artist · Director · Producer · Writer
House M.D. · Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce · Little Bird
I have always thrown myself into everything, and that includes terrible things, because I want to have the whole experience. Even if I know it's going to hurt for better or for worse, that has been how I've lived my life. And so it's given me a lot of information and allowed me to play a lot of different roles and understand a lot of different points of view. I think part of the beauty of being in a long-running television show is that, in season one, you're playing the role they wrote. By season two, they're writing the person you're playing. You start to build your voice, and they start to merge, and so by the time you get to season three, you're much more like full human beings having this dialogue.
Actress · Artist · Director · Producer · Writer
House M.D. · Girlfriends’ Guide to Divorce · Little Bird
I have always thrown myself into everything, and that includes terrible things, because I want to have the whole experience. Even if I know it's going to hurt for better or for worse, that has been how I've lived my life. And so it's given me a lot of information and allowed me to play a lot of different roles and understand a lot of different points of view. I think part of the beauty of being in a long-running television show is that, in season one, you're playing the role they wrote. By season two, they're writing the person you're playing. You start to build your voice, and they start to merge, and so by the time you get to season three, you're much more like full human beings having this dialogue.
"I don't know why we would really want to tell stories without being connected to the meaning. And I think that's especially for women, but I do think for human beings, that is how we can work as hard and be able to get up the next morning and keep going. Because we are working through the meaning, and it feeds us as we're like making sense of it all, trying to make sense of it, and for being in community and communion.” - Kate Mueth
”What we've done today is we've made everything so fast and so easy that I think there's something to the creative process about it being a little bit more of an exploration than it is wham bam, it's done. Let's go have lunch. And I think there is something to the creative process where it's allowed to develop. It's called process because it is a process. I'm always glad to just relax in the creative process, and I'm always very grateful for that. I think it's why I do so much indie film because it's really fun.” -Catherine Curtin
"I don't know why we would really want to tell stories without being connected to the meaning. And I think that's especially for women, but I do think for human beings, that is how we can work as hard and be able to get up the next morning and keep going. Because we are working through the meaning, and it feeds us as we're like making sense of it all, trying to make sense of it, and for being in community and communion.” - Kate Mueth
”What we've done today is we've made everything so fast and so easy that I think there's something to the creative process about it being a little bit more of an exploration than it is wham bam, it's done. Let's go have lunch. And I think there is something to the creative process where it's allowed to develop. It's called process because it is a process. I'm always glad to just relax in the creative process, and I'm always very grateful for that. I think it's why I do so much indie film because it's really fun.” -Catherine Curtin
President of Mad Solar · Creative Confidante & Industry Catalyst for Scott Mescudi a.k.a. Kid Cudi
Exec. Producer: Entergalactic starring Mescudi, Jessica Williams & Timothée Chalamet
Pearl · X starring Mia Goth
And what was so moving was when we went into Netflix to the theater to screen the finished product for the first time. You're sitting there and at the end of it, Scott was crying, and I looked over - it made me cry low-key - but Scott was crying and he said – This completely blows my mind because this is the first time I had a vision up here in my head and tried to express it, and then had to trust all 300 plus people, all around the world, working in different time zones, in different places, and each of them putting a hand to it and seeing exactly that vision. And then watching the product, and it is the best version of anything I could have ever possibly had in my head.
So, to us, that's the purest, most beautiful... Again, how fortunate that every hand was moving in tandem and moving in lockstep, and all of it. But that was the beauty of collaboration, this opportunity for a small vision to touch so many hands and become the big vision.
President of Mad Solar · Creative Confidante & Industry Catalyst for Scott Mescudi a.k.a. Kid Cudi
Exec. Producer: Entergalactic starring Mescudi, Jessica Williams & Timothée Chalamet
Pearl · X starring Mia Goth
And what was so moving was when we went into Netflix to the theater to screen the finished product for the first time. You're sitting there and at the end of it, Scott was crying, and I looked over - it made me cry low-key - but Scott was crying and he said – This completely blows my mind because this is the first time I had a vision up here in my head and tried to express it, and then had to trust all 300 plus people, all around the world, working in different time zones, in different places, and each of them putting a hand to it and seeing exactly that vision. And then watching the product, and it is the best version of anything I could have ever possibly had in my head.
So, to us, that's the purest, most beautiful... Again, how fortunate that every hand was moving in tandem and moving in lockstep, and all of it. But that was the beauty of collaboration, this opportunity for a small vision to touch so many hands and become the big vision.
Writer & Executive Producer of Easter Sunday starring Jo Koy, Jimmy O’Yang, Tia Carrere, Tiffany Haddish
Co-Founder of Crab Club, Inc.
I think there's this belief that creativity requires our ability to think outward and extrapolate beyond our own experiences and think of the world in imaginative new ways - which is true in a lot of cases - but I also believe in creativity as the ability to access inward and look introspectively at our own personal experiences and mine those experiences in ways that aren't necessarily one to one copies of our lives, but that we can extrapolate themes and lessons, comedy, drama, humor...into new works.
Writer & Executive Producer of Easter Sunday starring Jo Koy, Jimmy O’Yang, Tia Carrere, Tiffany Haddish
Co-Founder of Crab Club, Inc.
I think there's this belief that creativity requires our ability to think outward and extrapolate beyond our own experiences and think of the world in imaginative new ways - which is true in a lot of cases - but I also believe in creativity as the ability to access inward and look introspectively at our own personal experiences and mine those experiences in ways that aren't necessarily one to one copies of our lives, but that we can extrapolate themes and lessons, comedy, drama, humor...into new works.
Claudia Forestieri (Creator) & Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz (Showrunner)
Gordita Chronicles
When you immigrate, it's kind of like you're going through adolescence because you're in a new place. You feel weird in your own skin. You're learning new things. Everything is changing. You feel awkward. So that also helped us connect the adult stories to the children's stories.
Claudia Forestieri (Creator) & Brigitte Muñoz-Liebowitz (Showrunner)
Gordita Chronicles
When you immigrate, it's kind of like you're going through adolescence because you're in a new place. You feel weird in your own skin. You're learning new things. Everything is changing. You feel awkward. So that also helped us connect the adult stories to the children's stories.
Director of Lingua Franca & Under the Banner of Heaven
Before coming on board Under the Banner of Heaven, I had very little knowledge of Mormonism, but having read the script by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who is also the showrunner for the show, I resonated deeply with Jeb Pyre (played by Andrew Garfield) when it comes to his growing ambivalence and his crisis of faith. And the more he learned about the gruesome, grisly history of the founding Mormonism, and also about the case that he was investigating, the more disillusioned and disenchanted he was becoming. And that resonated with me because I was raised Catholic in the Philippines, but as I grew older, actually went to Catholic schools and universities from kindergarten until college, and then the more I learned about the history of the Catholic Church and the atrocities and the injustices that it has committed, especially in the name of colonialist and imperialist pursuits in the Middle ages, the more I questioned its control over me and my life.
Director of Lingua Franca & Under the Banner of Heaven
Before coming on board Under the Banner of Heaven, I had very little knowledge of Mormonism, but having read the script by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, who is also the showrunner for the show, I resonated deeply with Jeb Pyre (played by Andrew Garfield) when it comes to his growing ambivalence and his crisis of faith. And the more he learned about the gruesome, grisly history of the founding Mormonism, and also about the case that he was investigating, the more disillusioned and disenchanted he was becoming. And that resonated with me because I was raised Catholic in the Philippines, but as I grew older, actually went to Catholic schools and universities from kindergarten until college, and then the more I learned about the history of the Catholic Church and the atrocities and the injustices that it has committed, especially in the name of colonialist and imperialist pursuits in the Middle ages, the more I questioned its control over me and my life.
Producers of the Award-Winning Mass starring Reed Birney, Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs & Martha Plimpton
“Usually we just see the soundbites and the news and then there's a new one or a new story, the politics that takes away from what these families are going. These people in these towns are just glossed over, looked over. And that's not the case in real life. They live with this trauma forever…What I hope the next generation takes us just to absorb everything from our generation and our parents’ generation. There are a lot of living generations right now. The longevity of people and the young families, it’s amazing. I had five generations of my family alive at one point in my life, and it was just the most amazing I've ever been a part of.” –JP Ouellette
Producers of the Award-Winning Mass starring Reed Birney, Ann Dowd, Jason Isaacs & Martha Plimpton
“Usually we just see the soundbites and the news and then there's a new one or a new story, the politics that takes away from what these families are going. These people in these towns are just glossed over, looked over. And that's not the case in real life. They live with this trauma forever…What I hope the next generation takes us just to absorb everything from our generation and our parents’ generation. There are a lot of living generations right now. The longevity of people and the young families, it’s amazing. I had five generations of my family alive at one point in my life, and it was just the most amazing I've ever been a part of.” –JP Ouellette
Ian Buruma is the author of many books, including A Tokyo Romance, The Churchill Complex,Their Promised Land, Year Zero, The China Lover, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism and God’s Dust. He teaches at Bard College and is a columnist for Project Syndicate and contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. He was awarded the 2008 Erasmus Prize for making "an especially important contribution to European culture" and was voted one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals
by the Foreign Policy magazine.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Lexi Kayser with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
Ian Buruma is the author of many books, including A Tokyo Romance, The Churchill Complex,Their Promised Land, Year Zero, The China Lover, Murder in Amsterdam, Occidentalism and God’s Dust. He teaches at Bard College and is a columnist for Project Syndicate and contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other publications. He was awarded the 2008 Erasmus Prize for making "an especially important contribution to European culture" and was voted one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals
by the Foreign Policy magazine.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Lexi Kayser with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Digital Media Coordinator is Phoebe Brous.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
