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

Andrew , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Is there a lesson you learned in school that’s stuck with you and has meaningfully impacted your journey?

“You’re gonna be rich” –

My screenwriting professor at Michigan State once told me this with a laugh at his office hours. i was probably exhausting him with ideas and details of my nascent screenplays, dreaming out loud, with a level of energy I feel blessed to still be able to access twenty-odd years later. I was probably the only one from the screenwriting elective who utilized his office hours – a hallowed room inside an an ancient midwestern barn-like structure. Maybe it was just an off-handed “go get ’em” response, but to me it was a rare moment of validation, a scrap of bread to a haggard and hungry seabird. It was everything.

Ages before pumping myself with knowledge of the craft of screenwriting, before the deluge of contest entries, the consultants, the meat grinder of building desire and instinct into commerce, I was just a college kid, not new to creative writing, but still very brand new to the craft of screenwriting, with a professional mentor implying that maybe I had what it takes. If he meant that I had moxy, or the Spartan spirit to get rich doing literally anything besides creative writing in general and screenwriting in particular, holy crap am I bad at interpretation.

The way I look at that lovely comment now is: “You’ve got something.” And I do. It’s a life force that pulses through me that keeps me going, even if its unfathomable darkness oozing out of my pen, I can walk away from my writing apparatus and return to my loved ones, my Spartan basketball game watches, and live with a shred of balance. That’s what writing gives me. That’s why I’m good at it. All the multitude of times I could have quit, pretended there was something else for me, I could at least turn to my myriad of adaptations of my professor’s comment – “you’re gonna be rich” beget “you can do this” beget “don’t stop, you actually have what it takes”, beget “DO IT BECAUSE YOU HAVE TO.”.

I don’t know where I would be without my professor’s spirited assertion years ago, but I know I’m grateful for it, for how I have been able to warp and adapt it to whisper into existence whatever I need to hear. And if there is a truckload of money heading my way at any point, well that’s cool, too.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Andrew Zeoli – primarily a screenwriter, But I also create in the podcasting and music spaces.

I formed Mall Barons with my long-time writing partner “CW”, to maximize our own projects as producers, co-producers and writers, and to potentially open pathways to success for our future collaborators.

CW and I are ‘real ones’ – we chose the name “Mall Barons” because we so often would (and still do) write in food courts. On a related note, we are attracted to protragonists and antagonists with grit and grime, in our own work and in media we tend to admire.

We’ve collaborated together since possibly before the dawn of the Iphone. CW once made me a mood captivating CD that I played in my 1995 Buick. We go back. But we always look forward, and enjoy adding new partners and collaborators, particularly producers, financiers, directors, and fellow writers.

How’d you meet your business partner?

CW and I met at a poker game, that we both happened to rake in chips at. I was 23 or 24, this was… 2006? He always seemed to be talking, which I enjoyed, as an occasionally boisterous person myself, especially in those days. Eventually the topic of me writing a screenplay about an underground poker player came up. He was enthralled with the concept and wanted to know what the critical poker hand that ultimately sets the protagonist on a path to destruction and self-ruin was. He had the perfect idea, wrote it all down for me that night, we exchanged contact info, and soon after started working together on story ideas. I taught him screenplay structure and what I had learned about the craft so far. He offered his edcuated perspective, both as a filmed media fan, and as someone with an MBA, who grew up in Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s, surrounded by unearthed characters, with stories that to this day are bursts of inspiration. As is his friendship and insight. Collaborators became brothers.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I can do it till I’m dead! Till there are no more words I can string together, no image I can convey to encompass my perspective of being alive, and all the pain, reward, glory and garbage that living comes with.

Creative writing is the primary art form I’ve chosen, and re-chosen, and made firey committment to over and over, every time a cursor blinks in front of me, or I notice the grip of the pen in my hand, weaponized, like a reverse-IV pouring emotion and thought out of me, until there is nothing left to say for the day. And I’ll be damned if that’s not the best sleep there is, even better than your eyes fluttering shut under ocean air.

I am so very fortunate enough to have loved ones in my life that make me feel like home, no matter where we are. And part of that is how I’ve been able to make these wonderful fine folks understand that to me, writing is a calling that screamed at me out from the void at a very young age, and marked me as an Other until I finally began to learn and accept what I am, what it’s opened up for me, what it’s saved me from. And perhaps most importantly, who it’s kept me closest to. The ones that seemed to accept me and care for me most naturally through the highs and lows of this life, they have always seemed to understand on a more intimate level that I just need to be creative. That the very best version of me is always there-but-not-there, off having an adventure somewhere, but never really leaving your side.