We recently connected with Peter Herold and have shared our conversation below.
Peter, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
2015. The murmuring voices of two old surgeons quiet low. You blink slowly, confused. They flock around you, explaining that with almost 100 years of surgery experience between them, and after a six-and-a-half hour reconstructive surgery, they still aren’t sure how you lived. You barely listen. The sweeping motion of a broken bottle keeps ripping the bottom of your chin in two and plunging deep into your jugular.
1990. A calloused finger gently diverts your attention to his favorite part of ‘The Great Escape’ as he bounces you on his knee and blows cigar smoke in your face. Everyone laughs, including you. Things were different then, and a film was always on.
2012. Your father turns off the projector splattering that memory in Super-8 of you and your Hungarian-immigrant grandfather against the wall, and you are cognizant of how little you remember of your childhood. You wonder if it is trauma, or if time has always been a faceless entity to you. Then you see a photo of him at four years old, escaped from WW1, smoking a cigarette. You don’t look like him in the nearly identical way your brother and father do. But you know that stare. His stare is yours.
1994. The yard is torn apart by large, yellow machines. You and your brother unearth a treasure chest of jewels and swords and bloody pirate flags in the rubble. There are doors of the mind in the imagination of the young. You enter those doors often. They are your safe place.
1995. You don’t know ‘divorce,’ the word your brother keeps saying. You learn it.
1998. You have four parents now. All psychologists, psychiatrists and social workers.
2001. Mr. Melby installs a 4×4 plywood cubicle to stop you from disrupting the other fifth graders. He tells you if you’d harness your energy you’d go places.
2005. You don’t. You sleep through class. Except Acting. You perform a Biff Loman monologue and aren’t sure if Mr. Walker is joking with you when he tells you it’s the best he’s ever seen it performed. You two never got along. You’re not sure what it is you’re feeling. You learn later. You go get high and sleep through biology.
2006. A girl says you should audition for The Tempest at the Young Actors Guild. Her hair is long and brown. You agree.
2008. Your bags are packed and you’re ready to move to LA. You’ve starred in classical and contemporary theater. Naturally, you’re ready to be a movie star.
2013. You graduate from Western Michigan University with a business degree. You’re happy your father dragged you to an on-site admission, that you didn’t get a theater degree. You head off to Chicago to work in logistics.
2015. You are discharged from the hospital and no longer see the world the same. People call you a hero. That you saved a friend. You believe the lie, for a while at least. You are no longer afraid. You’ve already died. You quit a high paying job and begin telling stories, from both sides of the lens. You never look back.
2022. You admit, with some reluctance, that you were nearly 22 years old before you found out that there wasn’t really buried treasure under the construction pit in your childhood home. Your father painstakingly created and filled the chest before burying it himself. He never took credit. He allowed you to imagine something fantastical and your own, something safe and sacred. In truth, the question of what made you want to pursue a life of art could be answered an infinite amount of ways depending on the weather. But the prerequisite and commonality between all Americans is dreaming. It is the shackle and the ladder, and for better or worse it is all we know. And that capacity to imagine, to dream, of better things and other worlds, is the only thing that kept you sane in an insane world.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a director, writer and actor. Fascinated by performance, film, and storytelling, I began acting as a child, starring in productions ranging from Shakespeare to contemporary theater. By the age of five I had four parents, all mental health workers, a bizarre upbringing that instilled in me a strong, universal understanding of the human condition. Through cinema, I yearn to challenge and explore different perspectives that complicate that condition.
At 22 I got stabbed in the jugular and blinked briefly out of existence. When I woke, the lens through which I viewed the world had shifted. I left the comfort of my corporate job behind in pursuit of honing my artistry. Since then I have had the honor to work on a plethora of meaningful projects. I won 1st Place, Best in Show, at the Ypsi 24-Hour Film Shootout for my retro 80’s horror film Cycle of the Blessed (2017). I starred and associate produced my first full length feature film, Kid Brother (2017), for which I won the the Eclipse Award for Best Feature, as well as Best Supporting Actor. My first solo directed project, a short film titled Midnight Light (2018) was created for the Detroit 48 Hour Film Festival, for which I took home Best Director. The film also won Best Acting, Audience Favorite and Best In Genre.
In 2019, I directed a Legal Genius commercial starring D.L. Hughley, as well as local spots for Ford, Toyota and Subaru. I’ve produced for Pure Michigan, OnStar, Kevin Gates, Kanye West, Dicks Sporting Goods, Atticat, Flint Eastwood and more. In 2020, I directed my first commercial for Pepsi.
Narratively, I produced the short films Sloane (2020), Dream Out The Gate (2020), and Jumper Cables (2019). I worked as cinematographer on Bliss Burger (2020), the D12 music video Phony (2019), a documentary about the Portage Garage Sound Record label, and served as the 2nd Unit Cinematographer on the Gary Oldman & Armie Hammer feature Dreamland. I’ve starred in the fan-made remake of The Mask, titled Rise of the Mask (2018). It currently has over 25 million views on YouTube. I’ve also starred in short films The Peace of Wild Things (2020) and Emma (2019).
I worked as the assistant to producer Casey Silver on the Steven Soderbergh film No Sudden Move (2021). I am in post-production on a documentary feature titled Low Key (2021), about a family of Albanian Locksmiths in Detroit.
I’m most proud of my first feature film. We wrapped production this July. It was a labor of love for some of Metro Detroit’s most talented artists. It’s called Don’t Be A Stranger (2023) and is slated to release next year. It explores life’s primordial urge to move, through a wheelchair and the seven humans that happen to inhabit it.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
One lesson I had to unlearn, and I believe it was taught societally, is how slow things actually move. We are bombarded with stories of meteoric rise, when in actuality it is years, sometimes decades, of unrecognized work. Have patience and forgiveness for yourself, your team and the process. Nothing wondrous happens overnight.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
Seeing the team win.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.peterherold.com
- Instagram: @petey.does
Image Credits
Kyle Caraher