We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jordan Roman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

I’ve been fortunate to explore an amalgamation of topics that are truly fascinating to me and I treat every film as a chance to learn about a new profession, community, psychological condition, etc. Perhaps the most important and meaningful project for me to date is my short film Cuddle Buddies, about a single mother who works as a professional cuddler for a living. Creating the film was the most transformative creative experience I’ve ever had and I dove head first into learning about the professional cuddling community, including doing a cuddle session myself, while writing the script and bringing on a real cuddler to consult on the shoot itself for ensured accuracy. Ultimately I realized how unbelievably special and important this work is. Touch is truly the one thing that makes us uniquely human. The process opened my eyes to people who live unconventional lives or work non-traditional jobs and helped me release my own judgment of this work, and be in a position to educate and showcase professional cuddling through the film in a positive light. Making the film led me to meeting so many wonderful cuddlers, filmmakers, writers and other professionals and has been such a major part of my professional life that I am now currently in the midst of developing and pitching Cuddle Buddies as a feature film.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! I’m Jordan Roman and I’m a film writer, director and producer. I originally hail from Colorado Springs, Colorado and after completing my film degree at Elon University in North Carolina, I moved to LA to pursue feature film directing, which was always my passion since high school.

As a high schooler, I took a video class that transformed my life and rooted a deep love for filmmaking and the production process and every facet of it. I used to write, direct and act in comedy sketches that I shot with my friends and this is how I learned how to shoot and edit in the first place. After making a short neo-noir film that I made in my hometown of Colorado Springs, using all of my friends as actors and crew, I quickly realized that the communal aspect of filmmaking was something I loved and having the end product that I could watch with everyone was the most validating component of the work.

Since moving to Los Angeles eight years ago, I have written and directed a wide variety of short films, music videos and spec commercials, but have always found myself at home directing dramas and horror films. The last eight years have been the best training ground in terms of scaling up in the complexity of the shoots and ambition of visual ideas and learning the craft of filmmaking from every angle.

I’m the most proud of my short film Cuddle Buddies, a short I wrote, directed, edited and produced, about a single mother who works as a professional cuddler for a living. The amount I learned making this short was more than I could ever articulate and by far the most challenging thing I have ever completed. As a result I’m incredibly proud of how it turned out, but even more proud of the discussion it has generated when I have screened it at festivals and locally around Los Angeles. I’m now developing Cuddle Buddies as a feature film, which is set to be my feature debut as a writer and director and I couldn’t be more excited to continue to tell this story. The conversation around human touch, vulnerability and intimacy, or the lack thereof, is one that I feel is absolutely essential and is a narrative that is uniquely human.

I feel that exploring the human condition through the lens of vulnerability or it’s absence is what sets my work apart and is often the focus of the themes I’m continuously exploring in my own life, but through all of my work in turn. I genuinely love people and making films is my way of meeting these new characters in ways I might not otherwise get to. Meeting new crew, actors and collaborators is one of the most rewarding aspects of filmmaking.

If there is anything that I want people to know about me as an artist and as a person, it is that in everything I do I truly aim to be genuine.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The one thing that drives me more than anything on this creative journey is the will to overcome hardship. Put another way, the resolve to face difficulties and conquer them anyway.

I learned early on that a career in filmmaking is an incredibly arduous path and one littered with obstacles and barriers to prevent you from creating at the caliber you aspire to.

As I’ve made films throughout my time in LA, what I’ve learned is that any problem has a solution, it’s just about how much you care to solve it. Filmmaking is all about problem solving and upon every completion of a project, it inspires a confidence within you that compels you to continue seeking out the goals that scare you. In a career that’s built on risk, I’ve found that embracing it and seeking it out will lead to an exponentially higher rate of growth. Without risk there is no growth and without growth there’s no reward.

In many ways, my filmmaking career has acted as a mirror to my personal life that runs parallel, and the confidence and overcoming of adversity within my career has elegantly translated into the same desire to overcome the hardship within my own life.

In this way, I think my driving mission has informed and enhanced my life in the most holistic sense.

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

This is a wonderful question that I wish society and major conglomerates and lawmakers asked on a more frequent basis.

I still don’t believe that a large portion of our culture appreciates the major risk, hard work and uncertainty that anyone goes through to pursue a career in the arts as opposed to the safer and more straightforward careers that we often joke our parents want us to pursue, such as being lawyers, doctors, financial advisors, etc. The easiest way to tell this is to look at the salary equivalents for these jobs. In no way do I mean to disparage these other careers, but I think the first step for society to create a thriving and sustainable ecosystem is to pay the entry level positions in the creative arts much better and give out fair contracts and wages that allow people from all socioeconomic backgrounds to be able to participate in.

I also believe the narrative around the work we do should be learned and discussed more, and it’s often very eye opening for an outside perspective to see how much thought and energy goes into every single frame or word we create and agonize over. It’s truly a career that requires an obsessive energy and focus that can be all-consuming.

Contact Info:

• Website: ominousentertainment.net
• Instagram: @joro719
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanroman/
• Other: @director_joro @ominous_entertainment