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

Matt, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

In the fall months of 2013 I was fortunate enough to get to study abroad in Madrid, Spain. While there, I was enlightened on the beautiful Spanish culture and language that I love so much. But beyond the adventure that was studying abroad, I was able to take the time to meditate on a story that had been slowly growing in my mind. Near the end of my trip I wrote my first screenplay, Translation – a thriller that follows a queer college student who is in a home-stay that slowly becomes dangerous when he investigates the elusive past of his host-mom. I developed the script with my producing partner, Matthew Appleby, through the end of college and into our young adulthood.

What makes this project so meaningful to me is that it’s one of the longest relationships with something I have ever had. Boyfriends, lovers, and family aside, this script and the journey to bring it into fruition has been the most challenging test in patience and creativity. No one really tells you what the long game is like but making a film really is that. It’s often a one-sided relationship when you’re writing it but then something magical happens along the way. You start collaborating, inviting in other people’s ideas, changing perspectives on the material and suddenly, it becomes an actual being – a living, breathing concoction. This script is both personal and completely universal to me. That is what has made it so meaningful. It’s been by my side for so long – a true companion. It’s the kind of love that I never even knew I was capable of having.

Matt, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a filmmaker and actor based in New York City. Originally from Brookfield, CT, I received his undergraduate degree from Boston College and an MFA from Columbia University’s Drama Program. I have fostered a career in acting for television, recurring on hit shows like Blue Bloods on CBS and Hightown on Starz. I also work behind the camera as a producer and writer. I produced Adam & the Water, an independent feature film, while also acting in a supporting role. The film won several awards at international film festivals. Ahead, I will be producing my first screenplay, Translation, alongside Upgrade Productions in Los Angeles. I am currently developing another project that I co-wrote, an LGBTQ+ independent drama, Paramours.

Frida Kahlo said, “I never paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.” My upbringing was complex and tilted adversely to the gender norms of the outside world, but it was always a fruitful and ever-evolving reality. I want to translate the foundations of my adolescence into my work as a producer, writer and actor. That means bringing more queer characters to life in my own acting and supporting the work of fellow queer actors. It also means writing more diversity and complexity into queer characters that naturally have those qualities but are too often diminished, even to a trope. And it really means facilitating a set for artists to flourish in the same way my parents reminded my sisters and I of our innate value and let good collaboration reign supreme. All roads lead home, right? I know – corny but really, for me, they do. That freedom and validation at home was a gift in reflecting a reality I could work toward bringing into the mainstream. It is the mission of a lifetime and I look forward to the work.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As a gay man, a lot of people ask me, “what was it like coming out?” I always have the same answer: I never did. Naturally, that response usually receives a raised brow or pursed lips, such things that only garner further discussion. It’s there that I let people know that my parents, especially my mother, never raised my sisters and I to ever feel we had a barrier to break down, something that would allow us “in”. For as long as I can remember, my parents were unique curators of freedom of will that all my sisters and I equally benefited from. It was not until later – when one of my sisters and I went to declare our sexualities – that my mom said, “I know you all think your father and I are dumb but we did what we did so that you never felt forced into a moment like this. I never understood coming out, you were always here.” With that, I finally came into myself.

As a person, my upbringing and adolescence made for interesting conversation but where did it leave me as an artist and a filmmaker? Recently, I tracked back to that conversation with my mother and realized the very secret to my life as an artist existed in that house with my sisters. There was an equity and balance to things that transcended the social constructs I confronted in the outside world. I wanted to play dress up and do Angelo’s monologue from Measure for Measure in high heels? Mom got the shoes. I wanted to do the same in front of the football team? Sure, just enjoy the bloody face afterward. Same desire all the time – different endings depending on the environment. What my parents did for those 18 years was curate a reality I could hope and aspire to – especially later on in life – and especially as a producer.

Those lessons in my childhood became details in my identity. The things I felt scared to fight for – equity with my straight football teammates and mutual respect, for example – became things I couldn’t help but fight for. The fight became the journey and the joy. If we all can enjoy that friction and remind ourselves that that is the change, then resilience just becomes second nature. And everyone else can follow suit in their own paths.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A lesson I had to unlearn…it’s almost so obvious that it can be hard to admit. But, “avoid conflict” in all its forms sounds good in theory. In fact, we should all be nice day-to-day and respectful. I do truly believe that. However, conflict also poses an opportunity. It is not something that always has to end in dissent or no resolve. Instead it can bring out change and new momentum from often stale places. I used to think, oh my god, if I raise my voice and speak up against the norm or what’s agreed upon then I am screwing myself. But really, that’s just bullshit we build up in our heads to stop us from actually living. Conflict is life. The way in which we bring about conflict and digest it is a different story. There are ways to do that productively so that all sides are heard and nothing feels unilateral. But, avoiding it altogether never actually accomplishes anything. What it does is bring out coulda, woulda, shouldas instead. And those can eat away at you worse than saying anything at all. Risk is good, take it! Even when you think you’re the only one that will agree with it.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/matt.consalvo/?hl=en
• Other: IMDb:

  https://www.imdb.com/name/nm6641883/

Image Credits

William Alden Manning