My Origin Story...

 

My earliest memory is holding a crayon and drawing a massive mural on a wall in the dining room. That magic of creating something from nothing stuck with me, as did the realization that 'Harold and the Purple Crayon' had misled me badly. Must have used the wrong shade...

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Academy Days...

 

After drawing most of my life, and throughout K through 12th grade, I attended and left Academy of Art (SF) with an illustration portfolio, a decent education in color theory, figure drawing, line quality, and the proper way to paint a concrete floor. Work scholarship, gotta love it. 

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Gig Work...

 

I did trompe l'oeil for mansions in Pacific Heights, cartoons for individual clients, and one memorable evening doing caricatures at a Bar Mitzva, all of which taught me to listen to clients and also develop the skill to read their minds and anticipate what they really wanted. 

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I, Gofer...

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Around this time I'd finagled my way into being a gofer on a small film in SF. On the day of the shoot, I arrived at the home/set via bus, as being a city kid I'd never gotten my license, and had a rudimentary idea on how to drive, but the producer tossed me some car keys and gave my instructions on picking up lunches, etc. So, sink or swim, I got in the car and played the 'Don't Hit The Car In Front Of You' game for that week, Sage advice.

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Film Assistant...

 

I became the Assistant Editor on a low, low, low budget horror film that was self financed by a dentist, who, as luck would have it, also starred in it, then the Robert Conrad series 'Jesse Hawkes' at SF Studios, dragging clips from bins and hearing the star talk about his days with the director Robert Fuller. All in all a fun gig...

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Ink and Paint...

 

I eventually took an assistant test at Colossal Pictures (SF), then found myself in the Ink and Paint Department on a Levi's spot directed by Peter Chung with a thousand layers. My first day a scene was missing it's hilight and shadow shapes on two incidental characters who were running from... something. The department head asked the room if anyone knew how to animate, I raised my hand, took a pencil, finished it in 5 minutes. The next thing I felt was a tap on the shoulder. They need an animator in the main studio...

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Animation...

 

This was the (in)famous 'Edward' spot, and the beginning of Animating, and the loss of a few weeks sleep. Eventually, and rapidly,  I went from cleanup to animating a tentacled monster ripping up a sidewalk as the camera swooped in to the final closeup. That led to assisting on a thousand commercials wherein I had to change styles a few dozen times a week assisting on Adidas, AllState, Levis, Carls Jr, which led to animating and designing for Wild Brain (SF) on various commercials such as Coke, Sprite, Wonka, and some series.

 

Hollywood, USA...

 

During that time I learned to write and cranked out a treatment for a tres 90's low budget Sci-Fi action project, which wound up with the car-key slinging producer for Steve White Productions, so as we hammered out drafts of it, we also got paid to write 'Amityville: It's About Time' and 'Amityville: A New Generation,' which also included storyboards, prop design, and moving furniture with the teamsters. Unfortunately, the tres 90's low budget Sci-Fi action project that opened that particular door was never green-lit, so back to SF and Animation for a long while...

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Additional Screenplays...

 

As a WGAW writer I've been hired to write a myriad of screenplays ranging from Sci-Fi (Wardogs) to Dark Comedy (American Dream) to kids (Firehouse Shih-Tsu), and a few personal projects including my spin on the werewolf genre (Xolo), a Dreamed based on my days as an Undercover Op for a detective agency (Op 229). and my horror/fantasy/noir (Reno Gabriél), which has been the personal project that keeps expanding. 40 new stories, 100 or so new characters...

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Storyboard Work...

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As well as the film The Block (2025), I've worked boards for the Amityville films I co-wrote, as well as many episodes of Abby Cadabby for PBS, so, everything from murder to Muppets.

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Me, Personally? 

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Ever since reading about Springheel Jack when I was 7 or so, which revealed to me that there's another reality below the known, assumed reality we live in on a daily basis, I've been steeped in this stuff ever since (The 800 or so books I've carted from place to place will attest to that). So, my wheelhouse is in the monsters, UFO's, lost civilizations, Sasquatch, and just generally strange realm. 

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Also visiting haunted locales such as the Goldfield Hotel and the Mizpah in Tonopah, Nevada (That's me in a room there a few years back), as well as finding those places that will never be in the books. Here's a clue: The world is extremely haunted.

 

I love the darker, stranger corners of history (Johnny Cash was the first American to hear about the death of Stalin. Harry Houdini was the first person to fly an airplane over Australia, Jimmy Stewart smuggled out a Yeti finger from Tibet in his wife's underwear luggage.) Reality will always outpace fiction by a mile...

 

If I'm not doing this, I'm rehabbing interiors (carpentry, electrical, painting, interior design) and building things.

 

Or watching movies. My top of the head favorites include The Man Who Laughs (1928), Lucky Star (1929), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Awful Truth (1937), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) Yojimbo (1961), Legend of Hell House (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), The Thing (1982), Goodfellas (1990), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), American Hustle (2013)...

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Ask me anything...

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blackjax23@gmail