We recently connected with Hayden Szeto and have shared our conversation below.
Hayden, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I come from a long lineage of artists in my family tree, so you could say all the roads kind of led to it! My father is a renowned painter in China and had tried to teach me to follow in his footsteps when I was a child, however, I just couldn’t sit still and my father would take break sand watch movies with me; this lead to develop a love affair with film at a very young age, which led me to my very first theater class in high school and that’s when, as they say, I “caught the bug”.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
SmashCut Brothers has always been that “something” that Jesse Welch and I have wanted to collaborate on. We met in film school studying acting and we ended up on paralell paths with me as a performer and Jesse in the financing/producing world. We’d always meet up and share notes and geek out about our beloved industry of film. Lately, we’ve been doing a lot of reminiscing about the good ol’ days of film school and uttered many times “Man, it would’ve been so useful if I knew _____ in film school.” Then it dawned on us, that this was what we wanted to set out to do: to provide actionable advice for industry professionals by professionals currently working and climbing the Mount Olympus of Hollywood just like they are.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
It’s been a strange few years for the film industry with the pandemic and the WGA and SAGAFTRA strike. Many creatives like myself have been thrown into the deep-end of an existential crisis. However, life is either sink or swim and so we creatives really had to put our title to the test. Smashcut Brothers is an idea that came to us simply because we had so much downtime to strategize which resulted in Jesse and I combining forces despite charting unexplored waters. And who best to do that with than one of your best friends?
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being an artist or creative is helping others make life a little more bearable. I cant tell you how many times having knots in my mind about things I don’t understand and then putting on a podcast and having somebody else articulate the thoughts you’ve been trying so hard to exemplify! Or putting on your favorite movie that makes you smile and forget about the perils of the world just for a second. The catharsis is not only a luxury, it’s a necessity.
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