We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jeremiah Wenutu a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jeremiah, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
I was very fortunate to be raised by a mom that never let me waste away in front of a TV or play video games. She bestowed upon me her love of nature and would often send me outside if I was bored. My insatiable interest in nature and the world made me curious and I’d often seek out perspective in the little microcosms that surrounded us where I would let my imagination run loose. She was also an incredible storyteller and would often opt to make up a story, as opposed to pulling one from a book, and would tell me fantastic bedtime stories. All of these seeds of creativity and storytelling would help shape me into the filmmaker that I am today.
One thing she did read often, and share with me, were the columns and books of Dave Barry. He has an incredible way of writing satire and comedy that I instantly connected with and found hilarious. The way he would comment on neighborhood drama, being a parent, or even holding a fun-house mirror up to our social norms and interactions is something I still refer to in my own writing and would eventually lead me to make such films as “How To Live With a Friend (If You Have To)” and “TEST”, all of which look at the absurdities in the everyday of our lives and society.
The other thing, among many, that I can thank my mom for is all the time we spent in the cinema. We would spend the occasional Saturday buying tickets for a movie and after that was done, hop into another theater and see as many as we could before leaving! One special night, “Return of the Jedi” returned to theaters and I got to see it on the big screen in a packed house with Star Wars fans cheering along as the opening text blocks rolled and John Williams’ incredible score kicked off. That experience of film and community was instrumental to creating a sense that this is exactly what I want to be doing, further cemented by seeing Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” for the first time; I think that was the nail in the coffin of my fate as a filmmaker like “yup, this, I want to do all of this”.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
As long as I can remember, I was always a storyteller with a wild imagination but it wasn’t until I was 10 years old that I realized I wanted to be a filmmaker and stead-fast held onto that dream. When I turned 12, I got a Sony handycam for Christmas and it basically never left my hands; every day I was filming or making short films with my cousins or stop-motion bits with my toys; I would shoot the hell out of everything. As I got older, my style and subjects of focus became a little more honed in. I found myself drawn to writing character-centric pieces that explored our relationships with each other and our society. I begun writing a lot of dark comedies and dramas with main characters that would seemingly be pitted against hopeless odds but that spark of resilience, a sort of spite against failure, would push them to keep going. Not only was this autobiographical in a way, as a poor kid raised by a single-mom with absolutely no connections to the industry prior to film school, it was also the type of stories that were the most interesting to me; exploring how a character could forge their own destiny (for better or worse), what consequences would follow in the wake of choices and what are the lengths someone would go to succeed.
Watching some of my films or reading my scripts, one could start to see a pattern in my style of storytelling which is using comedy to swallow some hard pills of truth. We all have dreams, ambitions, and a line we set for ourselves on how far we’re willing to go to pursue them and sometimes how serious we take ourselves, or our self-appointed tasks, can be really funny to watch and that’s usually at the heart of most of my projects. My goal is always to take the audience on a journey they can relate to and laugh along with but give pause as the credits roll to process everything and think “huh, yeah why are things this way?”. In my short film “TEST”, winner of the Audience Choice Award at the 2023 Tales of the Catskill Film Competition, the main character signs up for an ambiguous taste test that gets increasingly suspect in nature but walking away would mean losing out on the $100 he was promised in the beginning. We see the ends he would go to for his cash prize but what does it say about our society and our involvement in it? In “How To Live With a Friend (If You Have To)” we shot a pseudo-how-to video about the trials and tribulations that come with living with a roommate but ultimately it’s a story of how we grow and change as people and in our relationships. With both films, comedy was a vessel to carry some much heavier topics meant to get the audience thinking long after the laughter died down and the credits rolled. If I can get my viewers to laugh, cry, and re-examine their own life, I’ve done my job as a filmmaker and balancing that has been my litmus test for success.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
When I was a junior in film school, I landed an internship with the Woodstock Film Festival which, at the time, was also partnered with the Hudson Valley Film Commission. It was four months long and completely unpaid so for the whole summer into fall I would bust my butt at the internship during the day, deliver pizzas at night to make some income, and slept on a mattress in my friends’ dank New Paltz basement at night. In lieu of rent payments for that summer I leant out my car for concert trips and brought home pizzas from my evening job. I was putting in 70+ hour work weeks for $7 an hour plus tips for only a fraction of it which essentially only paid for my gas to keep going. Shortly after I graduated, thanks to my connections through the HVFC/WFF, I was able to get into a couple productions as a PA, a position I recommend every filmmaker start as. During that time, when I was building up a production resume, there were a LOT of long days for little to no money and a ton of crashing on couches just to be able to take certain jobs. My first official day as a PA was a 23 hour day and I think I made $125 before taxes. That first year breaking into the biz was absolutely grueling but also some of the best times of my life because I was lucky enough to be doing what I wanted to do. I was just at Bard college with the Hudson Valley Film Commissioner, Laurent Rejto, recently and I was telling students that if you want to work in the film industry you HAVE to want it more than anything else; it’s the only way to get through the hustle.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
I co-host a radio show on WKNY called “Cinema Kingston!” and we tell our audiences all the time, please, PLEASE, get your butts back into theaters. We live in an age of streaming where so much of the film/tv audience is choosing to watch their shows and films from home and the result is movie houses struggling to stay open. To me, and this may sound a bit dramatic but it’s true, I regard cinemas as a kind of holy place. It’s where many of us first fell in love with movies. It’s where we can go to enjoy films as a community to cheer, laugh, cry and wonder with each other. If you want to do anything to support film and your local theater I ask that you go see a movie and buy some snacks, even once a month otherwise we’ll keep losing more of these precious establishments. Particularly, go see an indie movie; nothing against the superhero blockbusters but independent movies and theaters need our support now more than ever.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.jeremiahwenutu.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurrmiah/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiah-wenutu-ab2611133
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jeremiahwenutu8410
