We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Will Schutze. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Will below.

Alright, Will thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I had a role in Jon Favreau’s 2014 movie, Chef, but it was meaningful to me on two different levels. My story is going to start out sounding very familiar. Since I was little, I dreamed about being in movies when I grew up. I always sort of viewed my life and experiences as if they were scenes in a film. As soon as I saved a little bit of money from waiting tables in Dallas, Texas, and booking a few TV commercials, I moved to Los Angeles and signed with an agent. I booked my very first audition for a national TV ad and the job allowed me to stay for a little while and go on more auditions. That first booking must have been beginner’s luck because I didn’t land anything else through my agent. In the meantime, I’d been taking a little skeleton marionette puppet to the Venice Boardwalk, Santa Monica 3rd Street Promenade and Hollywood Blvd to street perform for tips. I really enjoyed this work so much, and I spent so much time doing it that I earned enough to survive. I began dreading the auditions and even hoping that I wouldn’t hear from my agent so that I could just go make my puppet sing and dance and make others happy. It truly made me happy. One day I looked up after a street performance and saw Jon Favreau, one of my favorite filmmakers, standing in the crowd my puppet show had gathered. He approached me and asked for my card. I actually had one, and he said he had noticed me on the street once before and found and shared one of my videos online. He said, “We will work something out,” and then he walked off. Some time passed—two years, and I had moved back to Texas deciding that I could continue to develop my puppet craft closer to home and be in the same place as my girlfriend. I worried some days that I had given up on my dreams by not ever making it to the big screen, but I felt that I had found something special that I truly enjoyed more than acting—puppetry. Then one day when I was sitting waiting for my girlfriend’s medical school graduation ceremony to begin, I got a call from an LA area code and I stepped out into the lobby to take it. It was the producer calling to tell me that Mr. Favreau wanted me to know that he was still a fan and had written a scene for me in his new movie, Chef. On set in Santa Monica, right where he had found me on the street two years prior, I unpacked my suitcase puppet show to shoot the scene. When Mr. Favreau gave me the direction for what he wanted me to do for the scene, he said, “do your thing.” When I saw the film for the first time, it was premiering on the big screen at SXSW in Austin, TX. I didn’t have a ticket to the screening, but I went to perform my street show outside the Paramount Theater. Once again, Favreau spotted me and said that I should have been given a ticket. He invited me to sit with him and watch the movie. When my scene came on I immediately realized that my dream had come true. When the movie was over, I realized that I was playing the role in my life that I was meant to play. I’m now married to the same girlfriend I had, and we have a 3 year old son. He and I are taking our new puppet show to the New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival this April.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I got into puppetry when I agreed to work an odd job for my high school theatre teacher’s husband, John Hardman, as a puppeteer in a show at the State Fair of Texas called World on a String. I fell in love with the art, discipline and craft of puppetry. I found it to be a way I can make myself and others happy. I find so much inspiration from other puppeteers, and I hope to do the same with my own work. I am now at a point on my path where I design, produce and fabricate every element of my show, from the puppets themselves to the music and the script writing, the lighting and set design, all aspects I make myself. I also create and direct music puppet music videos and short films. I build and work primarily woth marionettes—string puppets, but I also make and employ shadow, hand and rod puppets. I reuse a lot of trash and discarded materials to make my stuff. I home record all of my music. Everything I do has a pretty scrappy look and feel to it. It’s taken a long time, and I hope to be at it for much longer, but I think I have definitely started to develop my own style. I still street perform. I have performed in so many different kinds of venues and environments, but I think no matter what, I will always continue to take my puppet show out on the street and share it with unsuspecting people walking by.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is getting to see or hear how my work has touched another person. It can be as simple as looking up from a live puppetry performance and seeing a genuine smile on an audience member’s face or hearing a story about how something I made inspired someone else to make something. I think it’s the main reason I keep doing it.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I lived for many years feeling guilty for “copying” others’ work in the beginning of my career. But the thing I finally realized and accepted was that when you’re just starting out, you don’t know any better and you emulate what you inspires you. That’s how you start. That’s how you go. Your own style eventually develops and comes through. I think I could have gotten to it sooner just by copying more of my inspirations even more blatantly. You can’t learn how to do anything without trying to do it like others for a while at first. I wish I would have given myself more of a break way back then and just gotten on with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/mrbonetangles?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaaWg6UmJ9_q07GSlvThgN1SEfn7H8tY725y3XTRXXa31nfXh1JSnkCDDNc_aem_iAq3lX85Lgn6FXol-vWlag
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrbonetangles?igsh=MWo2NG15aGNrMGRvZQ%3D%3D&utm_source=qr
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/19dD8yALDt/?mibextid=LQQJ4d
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@mrbonetangles23?feature=shared
• Soundcloud: https://willyjames.bandcamp.com/album/mr-bonetangles

Image Credits

Will Schutze