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

Daniel , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

My whole life has been an exploration of how you get back up after failure and loss, and moving through the world with hard work and kindness. I owe so much to so many folks, but the person I want to shout out here is Amy Potozkin. She was the brilliant casting director at Berkeley Rep. On a casting trip to New York she had a premonition that I was going to go to Juilliard. To me, Juilliard was for rich kids and way out of my reach. I couldn’t even afford the application fee. She paid for it, wrote me my main recommendation, and she is the reason I had the courage to audition. I got in and was given a full scholarship, and going there and living in New York with my sister Sam changed my life in every way. I owe Amy, the Bay Area theater community, and that school everything.

Daniel , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m pretty terrible at talking about and selling myself. I think context is so important with everything, I hate sound bites and anything that lacks detail, nuance, and the extreme contrasts that are present in all true stories. We hide behind black and white blanket statements way too much in our work and culture.

I was raised in a very unique and unusual way. Theater and film became my home and gave me my family. Fassbinder said, “I would like to build a house with my films.” That hits very true and hard for me. I’m a queer filmmaker and very proud to be that and see the world through that lens. That doesn’t mean I always tell queer stories, but it’s definitely my heart and my identity and where I build from. I feel lucky to be born that way and to be a part of the amazing folks and warriors that make up the LGBTQ+ community.

At the beginning of 2025 I wrote: If you make films you’re a filmmaker. The act of making a fucking film is sublime, extraordinary, difficult, herculean and brilliant. You may never have the career that your heroes have, you’re probably not going to win an Oscar, but if you’re doing the work…if you’re finishing the tenth draft of your screenplay at 3am…if you’re making that film about your grandma’s secret love affair with a woman when she was 16 on your iPhone and editing it yourself – you’re a filmmaker.

There is too much bullshit about class and fame and success in our culture. I’ve seen and heard and witnessed way too many times people turning their backs on someone they didn’t feel was successful enough, or cool enough, or good enough to breathe their fucking air. I’ve been at parties where literally everyone is sizing up the room to see who is worthy and who isn’t, who’s been in Deadline recently and who’s had a so called failure, and the most interesting story never lives with those people. It’s always alone in the corner, not able to find words.

The work is all we can control and show up for. We make films that some people love, some hate, some could give a fuck less about. Some that get distributed, some that die in VOD. Make films anyway. We’re going to need those films in the next four years. Produce them, crew them, provide crafty for them, shoot them, edit them, finance them, light them, pull focus on them and GO AND SEE THEM IN A FUCKING MOVIE THEATER WHEN YOU CAN. Make them from the nattiest, most vulnerable, raw, scared, sacred parts of yourself. Do the research, listen. I say this as a queer filmmaker. So proudly a queer filmmaker. Show up and show out and let’s make a fucking shit ton of movies in 2025 and beyond.

That still all feels true to me.

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 feel like you get told and fed so much crap about what is success in our culture and so many people buy into it even when they know better. The ‘success’ and ‘fame’ narrative is extremely powerful and it can kill what is most deep and creative in each of us.

I grew up dirt ass poor and with others who were in the same situation. When we found ourselves outside the small town and world we lived in, it always became apparent very quickly how so much of the world viewed us with our fucked up shoes, busted shoelaces, holes in the crotches of our jeans and hand me down church clothes. We certainly were not viewed as successes.

I think you learn so much more and show so much more of who you actually are in failure. I learn the most about myself when I fall on my face and in how I deal with that. You know a person by how they treat someone they don’t think can do anything to help them. That’s when they show themselves.

Every great filmmaker finds their voice. Voice cannot be taught, it has to be fought for and discovered, earned through work and journeying. Often chasing what everyone tells you is success moves you further and further from truth and voice.

I’ve watched so many incredible people get brutally lost chasing ‘success’.

I think the biggest and most important thing is to chase truth, authenticity and character. That’s were all great stories lie. Success for me is making films, doing the work, and treating people with honesty, kindness and respect. So much of what we consider success is truly about luck. You can’t ever control luck but you can do the work and that often creates the luck for you, or at least opens the door to it.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

The first time I fell in love with a boy. The first time a boy kissed me and meant it. We were in a shitty cabin in the woods with a fucked up roof, listening to GNR’s PATIENCE. He was older and taller than me. He had crazy curly hair and fucked up, blistered hands from chopping wood with his dad and cousins. We didn’t say shit. We didn’t need to. He kissed me again, touched my face, kissed me, and went to get more beer from the other room. The music had bled into YOU’RE CRAZY. I sat on the bed hoping he’d dig up his dad’s shotgun, come back in, and put me down like a cancer-sick horse. That he’d spare me. A few years later, he returned to that cabin and put himself down alone in the same room where he’d kissed me. No note, nobody.

Where I come from, where I came from, there was nothing worse you could be.

Anthony Schatteman’s stunning film YOUNG HEARTS gave me back years of my life. It gave me back people I’ve lost and loved, and it gave me hope. Hope for a future that holds queer kids in the way his characters are held in his beautiful movie. Held for their queerness and love, not despite it. I want to live in that world. I know we don’t, but this film filled me with the hope for the possibility. It reminded me what film can be and do and how it speaks a global language – one that includes everybody.

The language of film is universal. I’ve always loved that.

Contact Info:

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