We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ethan Holland a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Ethan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?
I am a 21 year old person with autism who wasn’t diagnosed until I was 19. I was misunderstood my entire life, and I never really knew myself until I understood that small fact about me. The path forward in my life was always clear, my dedication was always strong but I never knew why. For a while I misunderstood myself more than anyone ever had, I felt lonely and different than everyone else around me because everyone else around me went out of their way to make it clear I was not the same as them. For the longest time I channeled this energy into trying to make things for others, I was the class clown, but not very funny, I was the tutor, yet not very good at teaching, then I was the actor, and finally I found something where people recognized me. I thought I wanted to act to make people see me, to prove I wasn’t just the weird annoying kid (which I definitely was), and to feel wanted. Then I worked on a play called “The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime” and it changed my life. It’s about this young teenager with autism who’s neighbor’s dog gets murdered, and this dog in his eyes is the only person who understood him. Around this time my dog had died, she was the world to me and everything felt like it was falling down around me, then I started working on this play and realized why my dogs had always meant so much to me. I also had autism, the dogs were simple, we didn’t need to talk and they always understood me. Through the process of this play I realized I also had autism, and through that I got diagnosed. Since then my life has been all about discovering myself, and how Autism affected me. I understand now that I work as an artist not to be seen as someone equal to others but to express myself in ways that I can’t socially through art. I can say the words I could never express, and understand the feelings I couldn’t understand through film and theater.
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.
My name is Ethan Holland, and I am an Independent no budget filmmaker, and theater actor/ director. When I say no budget I mean no budget, I make my movies for no cost other than a few dollars here and there out of my pocket. Unlike a student filmmaker, or independent filmmaker I have no crew, or large casts or budgets, I have worked every job on my film set, I am my own actor, editor, writer, producer, cinematographer, grip, sound person, boom operator, and of course director. I wouldn’t be able to do any of this without my best friend and filmmaking partner Jacob Spooner, who fills in every job I can’t do on set that day, and I do what he needs on his sets. On the other hand I am finishing my degree as a BFA in Performance for The Stage, and I have not only acted in several shows, I have also helped produce a 2 day directing showcase, and have written and directed pieces during my time here.
The easiest way to explain how I got into what I do is school. Growing up I needed a credit for home school so I applied to a local improv troupe for young people and started doing improv for the next year. Then when High School came around I needed to do an elective so I did theater for 4 years, then I was applying for colleges and my parents encouraged me to apply for acting because I loved it so much, and because I found lots of success in that field. Then finally, I go to college for acting and am in a directing piece for someone’s class and I meet Jacob. I tried really hard to flex my movie knowledge so I talked about watching Memoria and Annette because they were deep cuts from recent memory, and he was impressed so the next week went to see a movie together, and there almost hasn’t been a week since where we haven’ seen or made a movie together. Through him I started making my own movies and studying film because he inspired me with how he made everything himself, and through school I got many theater opportunities that could lead to more professional (and paid) work in theater.
The thing I am most proud of though when it comes to my work is my work. It is something I can reflect on and learn from, so that when I am working on a professional set I know what mistakes I made and won’t make them again, or can help others not make them. Also it helps me truly understand my craft, so I can be a better director in all aspects, knowing every part of the process, having worked it all, it helps me be better at directing others in what their doing and understanding of what they need and lets me grow respect constantly for others around me doing what I used to do by myself and makes me truly thankful when I work with a group of folks doing the work together collaborating on whatever the piece may be together.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
The goal is to make new things that excite audiences. I think that the way people consume art nowadays can be looked at and scoffed at, at times for good reason, as much as we want but if we aren’t doing anything about it then why complain? I don’t think that means make movies for TikTok, or cater to the largest audiences possible, but rather create experiences that force the audience to engage with it, whilst also entertaining them. Art is used so often nowadays as escapism to the point of people turning their brains off at movies, only going to event films, watching the biggest shows, then forgetting them a week later or only watching them on repeat. The general audience wants to feel safe, but they yearn for something new. My main focus is to create theater and films that beg the audience to interact with them. When it comes to theater, I want to direct and make theater that is fun for the audience but points a mirror at them, performance arts that will stick with people, or theater pieces that constantly remind the audience that they are watching something live. With film I want to go back to the image, movies nowadays are all about the scripts, what actor will get audiences in seats, what character is the most popular, how can I get paid 50 million dollars. For me I want to focus on the silent films, or more meditative film experiences that feel personal and lived in where the story is told through the image, whilst making it for however much it needs to be made and not more, I never want to create waste, and I don’t direct for wealth I want to make art for art. If I could make a living off it that would of course be nice, but I won’t stop making art even if I am broke and not being paid a dime.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Something I ask myself constantly is, why am I making a movie? I am autistic, I am anal, I like definitions. So when I am making something I think to myself “Why isn’t this a play, TV Show, web series, or skit, why is this a film?” I think it is important to recognize the history of the mediums we are working in. Theater is all about the text, there is nothing else other than an audience, actors, and the text when you put a show on in theater. TV is the same, TV didn’t exist before sound in film, before sound in film TV’s played the news and re-runs of films, TV needs the script because it is made in a shorter time frame and smaller budget than film. Film though originates with just the image, and the Filmmakers we talk about to this day from the silent film era are the ones who used the least title cards to tell a story, but rather told the story through image. Buster Keaton is to me, the biggest Pioneer of cinema and he famously had 10x less title cards than the films of his era. This is all to say, I try to hold myself to standards not just when I make movies but when I watch them too. My money matters when I am making everything out of my pocket, so I don’t watch movies that don’t care about the image, because those movies know that people are going to buy tickets so they don’t try to make something good they are making something for profit, and I don’t want to be seen as a bag of money I want to be interacting with work that respects me. So, for non-creatives I would say respect yourself, find art and look for art because there is centuries of good art out there to look at, you are more than your wallet you are an artist too whether you know it or not!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hollanddirects?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ethan.holland.96387
- Twitter: https://x.com/hollandmovies
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@BetterFilmStudio
Image Credits
Ethan Holland and Jacob Spooner