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

Alright, Charlie 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.

Our first projects at Madhouse, “See This” directed by Tricia Lee and “Long Pork” directed by Iris Dukatt, are deeply meaningful to us. Not only did they serve as launching pads, but compelled us to stand strong in our artistic voice as a production company. Though these two stories differ in tone, subject matter, and approach, they both boldly confront a cultural conversation: in “See This”, cancel culture, and in “Long Pork”, anti-choice legislation. Our work on these productions taught us to not shy away from the controversial, but to embrace it as fertile ground for creativity.

Charlie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We founded Madhouse Films in 2022 with the belief that exceptional storytelling comes from vivid imagination. The driving force behind this ethos was the desire to create filmmaking opportunities for underrepresented voices, in particular femme, queer, and BIPOC artists. We aim to shed light on our most pressing cultural conversations, not because we want to provide answers, but because we hope to encourage new questions.

We had the impulse for Madhouse Films as actors who sought avenues for creating our own work. As an actor, so much is often out of your hands and we craved a sense of agency. When we returned to our reasoning for pursuing performing, we were reminded that, at our core, we love storytelling. From there, we saw an opportunity to champion stories we believe in. It is deeply rewarding to discover a story and/or artist you feel passionate about, and bring together a team and resources to bring it to life. Madhouse has allowed both of us to expand our artistic identity beyond acting and discover our passion for producing.

In 2024, we are developing our first feature film and launching our commercial and branded content division. We’re excited to see where this next chapter takes us!

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Funding, funding, funding! While money is not everything, it is the thing we see getting in the way of artists making their work time and time again. Adequate funding offers access, particularly to those who have been historically marginalized. When money is giving directly to artist, it makes an immediate impact. It’s important to stress the importance of artists receiving enough financing to make a living off their work, as well. Too often, we are forced to accept less than a livable wage to pursue our passions. This puts us in a never-ending cycle of debt and reserves financial well-being for a select few who have access to other means of wealth. We miss out on brilliant new voices when there aren’t the resources to support their visions.

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

A big lesson we had to unlearn as both creatives and business owners is the belief that one should strive to turn their weaknesses into strengths. We’re often taught that working on our weaknesses is time well spent. While there is merit in committing to growth, it’s way more beneficial to focus on developing the areas in which you are naturally gifted in. Doing so relieves the pressure to be “everything”.

We’ve come to understand this as both creative and business partners with our unique strengths. At first, we were almost hyper-aware of what we each needed to work on, but in doing so, our workflow become inefficient. When we began to delegate tasks based on where we each excelled, we became way more productive and the work was more rewarding.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.madhouse-films.com

Image Credits
Portraits (David Goddard) Group Photo (Jacob Feingold)